Some technical anomalies were expected. About 5 percent of SpaceX’s first batch of Starlinks failed almost immediately after launch. Over time, this group of 60 Starlink prototypes suffered a failure rate of about 13 percent, according to McDowell. With more experience, SpaceX’s next 420 Starlink satellites had a failure rate of about 3 percent. SpaceX’s current generation of Starlink Version 2 satellites has a failure rate of about 0.01 percent, according to McDowell’s tabulations.
The US military’s Space Development Agency is fielding its own constellation of data relay satellites for applications in missile targeting and command and control. Some of the agency’s first 42 operational satellites encountered thermal and propulsion problems after launching last year, and they have taken longer than anticipated to raise their orbits.
In its assessment on Monday, the Institute for the Study of War wrote that the second batch of Rassvet satellites “appears to have failed to reach intended operational altitudes.” Zero Rassvets have reached 500 miles, and none of the second group have climbed above 300 miles, whereas much of the first cluster seems to have settled into stable orbits.
However, there’s a lot we don’t know. Perhaps, for untold reasons, Russian officials decided to abandon plans to orbit the Rassvet satellites at 500 miles. Starlink satellites, after all, fly closer to 300 miles. This would put the Rassvet satellites closer to users on the ground, which comes with performance benefits. But there’s a trade-off in that lower-altitude constellations require more satellites for seamless global coverage.
Also, networks like Starlink, Rassvet, and China’s Guowang and Qianfan fly their satellites in numerous orbital planes, or pathways. Russian ground teams may be intentionally keeping some of the Rassvet satellites at lower altitudes to allow their orbital planes to drift over a period of many months before eventually lining up with final pathways.
What we do know is that putting a megaconstellation into orbit is hard to do. At best, Russia’s entire satellite manufacturing sector has produced just a few dozen spacecraft per year since the fall of the Soviet Union. “It turned out we weren’t ready for this,” Yuri Borisov, the former head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, said in an interview in 2023.
Russian forces are clamoring for Rassvet after SpaceX cut off access in February to the Starlink network by unregistered user terminals in Ukraine, circumventing Russia’s illicit usage of satellite communications for military operations. Rassvet had been in the works for years, but the timing of the first Rassvet launch the following month offered Russian military commanders hope of soon regaining access to ubiquitous satellite broadband through a domestic network.