Three other Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) spacecraft launches this night

Roskosmos said that today at 00:19 (Moscow time), the Proton-M space rocket was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome with an upper stage DM and a block of three Glonass-M spacecraft.

At 03:52 there was a regular separation of the spacecraft unit from the upper stage.

Now the constellation of satellites will comprise 23 spacecraft, reports RIA Novosti and shows what photo:


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The CyberSecurity website adds to this that the launch of the devices is carried out in the third orbital plane, and here comes the following photo:



Both of these photos are from yesterday, they demonstrate the preparation of the launch vehicle for launch.

If you look at the current distribution of satellites in the orbital planes (I will also give a coralized hyperlink and a peeep-cast to overcome the possible habra effect), then it is not very clear why we should launch new devices on the third plane. There is only one satellite missing (or two, if you count the output for maintenance). Compare with the second plane, on which there are no two satellites, one more is brought up for maintenance, and another one is used only at the L1 frequency. It seems that the intentions behind such a distribution are not in my mind. I can only assume that they are creating a kind of “hot spare” in orbit .

But in any case, after a couple of weeks, we can expect a noticeable improvement in the continuity of the GLONASS navigation signal.

The following launches of GLONASS satellites are planned for autumn.