Russia intends to activate a commercial version of its local answer to Starlink next year, according to people familiar with the program cited by Reuters, the latest milestone in a project that has been promised for almost a decade.
The constellation is called Rassvet, the operator is a private aerospace company called Bureau 1440, and the ambition is deliberately narrower than the American network it aims to rival.
The scale tells the story. SpaceX has put thousands of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. Bureau 1440 plans to reach commercial service in 2027 with a constellation in the hundreds, with figures of around 288 to 292 satellites cited for the first operational phase, and a longer-term goal of closer to 900 by the mid-2030s.
For years, Moscow has described the goal as something conceptually similar Star Link rather than a comparable match, and the numbers hold that honest promise.
The hardware is more advanced than the rhetoric alone would suggest. In March, the company launched 16 operational satellites on March 23, following a series of experimental spacecraft in 2023 and 2024 within the framework of the Rassvet-1 and Rassvet-2 test programs.
Bureau 1440 has described the satellites as carrying 5G non-terrestrial network communications, laser links between satellites, an improved power system and plasma thrusters, the standard kit for a modern broadband constellation.
Dmitry Bakanov, head of the Roscosmos space agency, told Reuters last September that several test vehicles already in orbit had been inspected and production satellites had been modified accordingly.
Performance objectives have also been published. Bureau 1440 has announced speeds per subscriber ranging from 50 megabits to one gigabit per second, with coverage planned in more than 70 countries.
Those numbers are claims rather than demonstrated performance, the distinction that separates a constellation on a slide from one carrying paid traffic, and only the commercial launch will test them.
Money has been committed, at least on paper. The Russian government has allocated 102.8 billion rubles, about $1.26 billion, for Rassvet, and the 1440 Office has said it will add about 329 billion rubles, about $4 billion, from its own account through 2030.
The company has estimated potential demand of between 1.5 and two million subscribers within Russia and up to 12 million worldwide, with coverage planned in more than 70 countries.
The 2027 date deserves a footnote. An earlier target fell amid reported production shortfalls, which is the kind of detail that tends to recur in constellation programs everywhere, not just Russia.
Building satellites is a problem; building them quickly enough, in the numbers that a useful network requires, is a different and more difficult task. The 16 operational spacecraft now in orbit are the start of a number that needs to surpass 250 before paying customers can be served.
There is a strategic reading that is below the commercial one. A sovereign broadband network that is not dependent on a foreign operator is attractive to any government that has seen Starlink become a factor in the war in Ukraine.
Whether Rassvet arrives on time and with the performance that Bureau 1440 announces is the question that 2027 will answer. The constellation, for now, is mostly a plan with a release cadence attached.
