MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia plans to put a dozen of new communications satellites into the Earth’s orbit in the next nine years, the head of the country’s communications agency Rossvyaz said Thursday.
"A program has been laid out on how to expand the civil satellite constellation in 2017-2025. Under it, we plan to launch seven satellites into the geostationary orbit and four into the highly-elliptical orbit," Oleg Dukhovnitsky said at a Satellite Russia conference in Moscow.
The Rossvyaz chief added that "paperwork is already being prepared for five devices," which will be launched in 2019-2020.
Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said earlier that a total of 44 satellites would be put into orbit by 2025, including for military and scientific purposes. The program’s federal budget is worth 87.4 billion rubles ($1.3 billion).
