Exolaunch’s small satellite cluster of 15 microsatellites and cubesats ,“Wanderlust, Desire To Travel”, will launch on Soyuz as soon as September 2020.

Berlin, August 17th, 2020 – Exolaunch, a Berlin-based rideshare launch and deployment solutions provider, and Glavkosmos, a single operator of foreign commercial activities of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos, have initiated a launch campaign for 15 international small satellites onboard a Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with a Fregat upper stage. As soon as September 2020, Soyuz-2 will deliver a cluster of small satellites into orbit as rideshare payloads on a Roscosmos mission.

Exolaunch’s small satellite cluster, named “Wanderlust, Desire To Travel”, includes three microsatellites below 100 kg and twelve cubesats for customers from Europe, Canada, the USA and the UAE. The satellites will deliver remote sensing, AIS, ADS-b and IoT data for leading New Space startups and the international scientific community. After primary payload separation, a cluster of small spacecraft will be deployed into a sun-synchronous orbit of 575 km, where it will undergo subsequent formation by the Fregat upper stage.

All satellites will be integrated with Fregat and deployed into their target orbit using next-generation deployment systems developed by Exolaunch – the CarboNIX shock-free microsatellite separation systems and EXOpod cubesat launch deployers – both of which have a successful flight heritage on previous Soyuz-2 and Fregat missions.

Dmitriy Sternharz, CEO at Exolaunch, commented on the upcoming launch: “We’re thrilled to start yet another launch campaign with Soyuz-2. Exolaunch truly values this fruitful cooperation with Glavkosmos, who continues to be our reliable partner in the Russian market when it comes to smallsat launches on Roscosmos missions. This will be our seventh mission with Soyuz-2/Fregat, and for good reason: this is one of the most reliable launch systems on the market.”

Exolaunch has named this mission “Wanderlust, Desire To Travel”, which symbolizes both the ever-increasing importance of sustainable access to space for small satellites and the longing for travelling, which has recently been restricted.

The Exolaunch team – alongside multinational small satellite developers and Glavkosmos – are currently preparing for the autonomous spacecraft checks at the launch site ahead of the small satellite integration with Fregat.

The cooperation between Exolaunch and Glavkosmos for this upcoming cluster launch comes after many prior successful collaborations, which included the joint launch of nearly 30 small satellites with Soyuz-2 in July 2019 from Vostochny and numerous other jointly implemented rideshare launches.