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Skif [Scythian]

For residents of large cities, high-speed mobile Internet is no longer a luxury. You can communicate via video calling and exchange gigabytes of information anywhere: in the office, at home or outdoors. Today, the monthly subscription fee for this opportunity is equal to the cost of just a few cups of coffee. However, Russia is the largest country by area, and there are still corners of its map where mobile communications and the Internet are unstable or absent altogether.

In the world, this state of affairs when people do not have access to information, financial institutions, education, etc. is called digital inequality. Space industry specialists believe that satellite Internet will help correct the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. The Skif system will be responsible for stable access to it even in small villages somewhere on the edge of the country within the framework of the Sphere federal program (implemented by Roscosmos enterprises).

Without satellites, it is impossible to implement a program to eliminate the digital divide, said Alexander Bloshenko. The expert clarified that this issue will be resolved by the Skif collective broadband access (BBA) system. The system called "Skif" [Scythian, not Pole] is created primarily for the provision of communication services in remote sparsely populated areas of the Arctic, where it is inefficient to pull fiber optic communication lines. In the future, the system will be able to provide coverage of the entire Earth.

“We launch the first six vehicles and cover everything that is above 45 degrees north latitude and below 45 degrees south latitude, the connection will be constant, 24 hours a day. We will have breaks in the area of ??the equatorial zones - there are 20 hours of communication, no four hours. When we launch the next six devices, we will completely cover the entire globe without a break,” TASS quoted the statements of the head of Zond-Holding company Viktor Doniants 19 May 2018.

The Skif system will be based on the medium-class space platform Express 1000, developed at Information Satellite Systems JSC named after academician M.F. Reshetnev. The term of active existence of telecommunication satellites based on this platform is 15 years. It is noted that Zond-Holding has already begun manufacturing prototypes of equipment for future satellites. In addition, work is underway to coordinate the radio frequency assignments of the Skif system.

The system fits into the concept of eliminating digital inequality in Russia: so, according to data for 2017, 2.37 million people live in the Russian Arctic, and with the help of these satellites they will be able to access the Internet from mobile devices through mobile operators , including future 5G operators.

The Skif-D demonstrator satellite is designed to test new technical solutions for high-speed Internet access and protect the orbital frequency resource. This later phrase reflects the fact that by 2019 about 20 applications have been submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission alone for the allocation of frequencies for global low-orbit FSS systems, and most of them are in the Ka-band. If we take into account that no more than one or two systems can operate simultaneously in the same band, it becomes obvious that there is a very low probability of obtaining frequencies in the Ka-band for the Russia global system, which will be the last in a number of other applications to the ITU.

The Russian Skif-D satellite, the first orbital spacecraft from the Sfera (Sphere) multi-satellite orbital constellation, was successfully put into orbit 22 October 20922. A Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying the Skif-D satellite and three Gonets-M communications satellites was launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome on at 22:57 Moscow time (19:57 GMT). "Separation of all the satellites was completed," a Roscosmos spokesperson told journalists several hours after the launch, specifying that Skif-D and the Gonets-Ms had all reached their designated orbits.

The Skif-D satellite will demonstrate the capabilities of Russia's future system of broadband internet called Skif, which will also be part of the Sfera constellation. It was currently planned that the Sfera constellation will include a total of 162 satellites, not 500, as initially planned. The system will include Express, Express-RV, and Skif satellites for broadband internet access, as well as Marafon satellites for the internet of things (IoT).

The Skif-D spacecraft was assembled on the basis of technologies for creating unpressurized small-class satellites, successfully tested in orbit. The Skif's mass does not exceed 200 kg, power consumption is about 250 W, and its service life in orbit is three years. The device operated at an altitude of about 8 thousand km (medium circular orbit), which gives it a number of advantages over communications satellites located in geostationary orbit (altitude 36 thousand km). For example, the "Scythians" will be closer to the Earth, which means that time delays during data transmission will be minimal.

In addition, the choice of a medium circular orbit opens up for satellite Internet operators the opportunity to serve northern latitudes inaccessible to traditional satellites in geostationary orbit, including the regions of the Far North, the Arctic, the Northern Sea Route and cross-polar air routes. Also, due to the location of Skif, experts plan to establish an optimal balance between the height of the orbit, the visibility time of the spacecraft for the subscriber and the number of satellites needed to serve Russia.

During flight tests, the pioneer satellite of the Sphere project made it possible to study the stability of the orbit and measure the level of radiation exposure on the equipment installed on it. In addition, as they say in the Information Satellite Systems company, new domestic service systems and payloads will be tested on the Skif-D satellite, including transmitting and receiving channels in the Ka-band frequency range (frequency range of centimeter and millimeter wavelengths, used mainly for satellite radio communications and radar). Skif will also send a test Internet signal to populated areas located in several remote corners of our country, including the Far North and Arctic regions.

In the future, eight Skif satellites are expected to go into orbit to form a multi-satellite orbital constellation. Other soruces report one launch vehicle will launch two satellites into orbit. The full constellation will consist of 12 vehicles - four on each of the three orbital planes. The active service life of the satellite, which weighs 1,750 kilograms, will be 12 years. Serial Skif satellites, weighting over 1 metric ton, will differ from the demo ["D"] version. On 11 November 2022, the director general of the Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems (ISS) company Yevgeny Nesterov told TASS in an interview that the deployment of the Skif satellite constellation, designed to provide cheap broadband internet access, is scheduled for 2025. "The start of the Skif system’s deployment is scheduled to begin in 2025, with the launch of two Skif satellite prototypes," Nesterov said.

The official said scientists had already completed testing the systems and payload on a demo Skif satellite. "Flight trials, when complete, will be followed by experiments in establishing communication channels, with regard to the Doppler effect and variable delay. Also, throughout its entire life span, the satellite will be involved in a study on effects of space radiation, experienced by a satellite with the orbit of some 8,000 km above the ground," the scientist said.

Starting 2026, the Skif satellites of the Sphere project will provide Internet access in the Arctic.