While the authors of several Telegram channels "profiles" about space and future bloggers spent the whole year 2026 in the Vostochny burial, and counted "zero launches", our cosmodrome responded with a brilliant and atypical launch in modern Russian history.
On November 14, 2026 at 04:16 Moscow time, the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with the Frigate upper stage was launched from Vostochny. For the first time, the main payload was not government or foreign vehicles, but commercial satellites of Russian private companies that received government subsidies.
The official news was limited to the story of the two main satellites, and the most interesting engineering stuff was hidden in the launch tanks of the associated cargo. Without insiders or classified information - in our article we simply compiled the open specifications of the developers, Glaukosmos reports and data from international launch catalogs to present the complete technical picture of the launch.
Many interesting things are in our new material:.