Russia launches Soyuz rocket carrying satellites

A Russian Soyuz rocket launched from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome on Friday carrying dozens of broadband satellites toward space. The Soyuz-2.1B rocket blasted off with 36 OneWeb satellites from the facility, which was used for a fully-commercial launch for the first time.

OneWeb, a British firm that recently survived bankruptcy, hopes to challenge SpaceX's Starlink network. French company Arianspace, which carried out the launch with its Starsem affiliate, said it planned to send sixteen Soyuz rockets from three cosmodromes - from the end of 2020 until 2022. Its plans included launches in French Guiana, Kazakhstan and Russia.