All 16 Latest Rassvet Satellites Remain Below Intended Orbit, Risking Network Delays

All 16 satellites in the latest Rassvet broadband batch remained substantially below their originally stated operating orbit as of September 1, more than six weeks after their July 19 launch. Publicly available U.S. Space Force tracking data placed the spacecraft at roughly 190 to 250 miles above Earth, while developer Bureau 1440 has described an operating altitude of about 500 miles.

The tracking establishes an orbital shortfall, but not its cause or final outcome. Positional data indicates that many of the Rassvet-3 satellites attempted to climb. None, however, had approached the originally stated altitude. Bureau 1440 and Roscosmos did not immediately respond to requests for comment, leaving open whether controllers expect further orbit-raising maneuvers, have adopted a lower target, or are dealing with a spacecraft-level limitation.

Altitude is now the central engineering issue

A low deployment orbit is not automatically a mission failure. Satellite operators can intentionally release spacecraft at lower altitudes, conduct checks and then use onboard propulsion to reach their working orbits. That approach also allows a nonfunctioning satellite to decay naturally rather than remain as long-lived debris.

The problem for Rassvet is time spent low without completing that climb. Even the thin upper atmosphere produces resistance, gradually removing orbital energy and pulling spacecraft downward. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center explains that atmospheric drag is a major and difficult-to-model force in low Earth orbit. Its strength also varies with solar and geomagnetic activity as the upper atmosphere heats and expands.

A functioning satellite can compensate by raising or maintaining its orbit, but that requires propulsion, propellant and operational margin. The longer a spacecraft must fight drag, the more of that margin it may consume before beginning routine service. If its propulsion or remaining fuel cannot overcome the losses, its orbit will continue to decay toward reentry. Journalist Anatoly Zak identified two satellites in early August that appeared to be moving in that direction, although the batch has not been officially declared lost.

No public information establishes why the spacecraft have remained low. Tracking alone cannot determine whether the constraint involves propulsion performance, power, communications, commissioning, flight software or a deliberate change in the deployment plan. Assigning a technical cause would therefore go beyond what the orbital data can show.

The first batch complicates the target-orbit picture

The July mission was Bureau 1440’s second launch of 16 Rassvet-3 satellites. Of the first 16 launched on March 23, 12 reached and maintained altitudes near 340 miles. That is still well below the approximately 500-mile altitude presented on Bureau 1440’s constellation website, but their stable behavior could indicate that the program adopted a lower operational orbit than initially advertised.

That possibility prevents a simple conclusion that every satellite below 500 miles has failed. Even against the approximately 340-mile benchmark established by most of the first batch, however, the latest 16 remain substantially lower. Across both launches, only 12 of 32 spacecraft 37.5% have reached what appears to be a long-term orbit.

That ratio matters more for a constellation than for a stand-alone mission. A broadband network depends on enough functioning satellites distributed around Earth to provide useful coverage and capacity. Bureau 1440 has described a buildout requiring “dozens of launches and hundreds of satellites.” Ukrainian estimates have put the minimum for a stable network at approximately 200 to 250 operational spacecraft.

At 16 satellites per mission, five launches a year would add about 80 spacecraft before accounting for deployment losses, early failures or replacements. If entire batches require extended recovery work or provide only a small number of long-lived satellites the launch count alone stops being a useful measure of network progress. Manufacturing, launch cadence and orbital commissioning all must produce operational spacecraft at a repeatable rate.

Rassvet remains far from that point. Further maneuvers could still recover some or all of the July batch, and the available tracking does not justify declaring the 16 satellites permanently lost. The next decisive evidence will be whether their orbits begin rising and stabilizing. Until then, a program that needs hundreds of working spacecraft has placed only 12 of its first 32 into apparent long-term orbits.

By David Whitaker — Associate editor for AMI’s aerospace and drone systems desk, translating flight systems, aircraft programs, spaceflight, and UAV developments into accessible technical stories.