By 2030, Roskosmos will launch about 600 satellites of the Sphere system, the “analogues” of which are the Western projects Starlink and OneWeb, promises the official magazine of the state corporation “Russian Space”.
The publication of the publication claims that the ideology of “Sphere” is “stronger” than that of Starlink and OneWeb, since the latter are “aimed solely at solving problems of communication and transfer of large amounts of information.”
“But it is obvious that in some cases the consumer does not need expensive broadband Internet – it is enough for him to receive data from an electricity or gas meter in a country house or send a signal about the need for urgent assistance,” the publication says.
It also says that Sphere's user terminals will be smaller and cheaper than those of Starlink.
In February, Sergei Prokhorov, director of the department for promising programs and the Sphere project, at Roscosmos, said that the creation of the Russian multifunctional satellite system Sphere would require extra-budgetary investments in the amount of more than 350 billion rubles. According to him, the relevant investors have already been found.
In April 2019, a representative of Roskosmos said that the creation of Sphere would require almost 534 billion rubles.
In June 2018, it was reported that the Sphere global satellite system project, involving the deployment of about 600 satellites, is a modified version of the Efir communication system project previously announced by Roscosmos.
In May 2018, Roscosmos announced the Ether project, designed to compete with similar Western systems OneWeb and Starlink. At the same time, Evgeny Nesterov, Deputy Director General for Strategic Development and Innovation of Russian Space Systems, noted that the program providing for the deployment by 2025 of a constellation of 288 satellites with an orbit of 870 kilometers will require investments of 300 billion rubles.
