Russia’s Meteor-M 2-1 weather satellite and 18 nanosatellites went missing today after their launch aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Far East.
Among the lost spacecraft were 10 satellites that were supposed to be put in orbit for San Francisco-based Spire Global and become part of the company’s Lemur-2 Earth observation network. Two remote-sensing satellites from Astro Digital, a Silicon Valley space venture, were lost as well.
The launch failure is likely to raise new questions about the capabilities of the Russian space program and its controversial multibillion-dollar effort to create the Vostochny launch complex as an alternative to the decades-old Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
