Second Rassvet-3 satellite burns up after thrusters fail to fire

Rassvet-3 No. 17, registered under NORAD identifier 100083, reentered on 30 October, Defence-UA reported. It had launched on 19 July aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket with 15 other spacecraft. The satellite never activated its propulsion system or performed an orbital correction, according to Defence-UA and UNITED24 Media. Atmospheric drag pulled it down until it hit dense air, and it burned up after three months and 11 days in orbit.

SFG Media dates the reentry to 29 October, a day earlier, citing tracking data from the US NORAD catalogue.

Second loss this year

The first loss came on 6 June, when Rassvet-3 No. 4, NORAD 68363, fell out of orbit after a similar thruster failure. It had launched on 23 March as part of the first production batch. The two losses are nearly five months apart. They hit the first two production batches, not the programme's first two missions: Bureau 1440 flew two small test flights before the March and July Rassvet-3 batches, shattered.io reported.

Two satellites from the July batch, Nos. 17 and 23, had been losing altitude for weeks before the loss. No. 23 sank to about 220 km and was lifted on 20 October. It now sits at roughly 300 km and keeps climbing, Defence-UA and UNITED24 Media reported.

The rescue is not settled

Shattered.io cautioned that No. 23 is far from safe at 300 km. Nasha Niva, citing the space researcher Anatoly Zak, had expected it to reenter within 78 hours after 6 November. The later Defence-UA and UNITED24 Media accounts describe a rescue instead.

Shattered.io said the recovery shows the spacecraft can work when the thruster wakes, suggested No. 17 suffered a hardware or commissioning failure rather than a design that cannot fly, and said matching failure signatures point to a recurring fault rather than random bad luck. Bureau 1440 has not explained either failure in public, and no root cause has been published.

Where the constellation stands

Thirty Rassvet-3 satellites are in orbit, according to Defence-UA. Of those, 26 have reached about 500 km, and No. 11 is expected to reach that altitude soon. SFG Media, using NORAD tracking, lists four still climbing: Nos. 23, 14, 26 and 11.

The planned operational altitude is 800 km. Satellites from both batches are staging at around 500 km, where they spread out into their assigned slots before a coordinated ascent. Defence-UA says the 500 km stall is not a failed mission; it calls deployment extremely slow but the fleet's condition not bad.

The company is testing communication terminals in remote Russian regions, Defence-UA reported. Equipment resembling satellite terminals has also been spotted aboard Russian drones used to attack Ukraine, although its connection to Rassvet remains unconfirmed.

The gap to Starlink remains wide. The Guardian estimated about 10,000 active Starlink satellites and said Rassvet's capacity is limited with an estimated 26 working satellites. In March 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko said the Rassvet constellation was expected to have 292 operational satellites by 2027, SFG Media reported. None has reached the final 800 km orbit.

The two production batches launched four months apart, in March and July, at about 16 satellites each. Shattered.io said nothing in the coverage it reviewed points to a third Rassvet-3 launch date.

What happens next

Once all the satellites reach 500 km and take their positions, Bureau 1440 plans a synchronized ascent and a spread along the entire orbital path to 800 km. The plan depends on the same thruster system that failed on Nos. 17 and 4.

The public record now shows two lost satellites, one rescued, and a constellation still short of its working altitude.