[Igor Antunov]

An imaging satellite and 72 micro-satellites were launched into orbit Friday from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Russian space agency Roscosmos and research centre Glavcosmos announced.

The Soyuz 2-1A rocket successfully lifted off at 0643 GMT with the satellite payload, Roscosmos said in a statement.

According to Russian news agencies, Glavcosmos, charged with putting the satellites into orbit, later reported that by 1441 GMT all the satellites had successfully separated. They were released into three different orbits.

"For the first time in the world, such a complex and large mission has been developed and implemented," said Glavcosmos.

The primary payload, the Kanopus-V-IK satellite, is to provide wide-angle images of the Earth and will be used especially to detect forest fires or to update the topography of maps.

The 72 small satellites include those made by Japan, Germany and Canada along with 62 nanosatellites known as CubeSats, developed by the United States.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-russia-sa ... t.html#jCp

A solid number.

[MememyselfandIJK]

Hey wasn't the US supposed to do something like this? Oh wait, they don't even have a proper rocket in operation!

[ThirdTerm]

The 72 small satellites include those made by Japan, Germany and Canada along with 62 nanosatellites known as CubeSats, developed by the United States.

With the demise of America's space program, Russia was the only remaining country with solid space technologies to launch satellites. However, Asian countries are catching up rapidly. India's ISRO has been commercially launching foreign CubeSats as secondary payloads for a decade and it set the world record last year by launching 103 CubeSats for various foreign companies.

NASA plans to select the payloads by Feb. 19, 2016, but selection does not guarantee a launch opportunity. Selected experiments will fly as auxiliary payloads on agency rocket launches or be deployed from the International Space Station beginning in 2016 and running through 2019. To date, NASA has selected 105 CubeSats from 30 states. Thirty-seven CubeSats have been launched, and 16 more are scheduled to go into space in the next 12 months.
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa ... xploration

[Igor Antunov]

Yes, and Japan is working on a viable method to collect space junk (defunct satellites) and burn them up in orbit so things don't get out of hand. And after Russia, China is the most active space power in terms of launches. But it depends on the year. US sometimes sees a flurry of launches every few years.

[Rugoz]

With the demise of America's space program, Russia was the only remaining country with solid space technologies to launch satellites.

This is just total nonsense. America's space program trumps everyone else's by far. It has several operating launch vehicles: Falcon 9, Atlas V, Delta IV, Antares, and various smaller launchers. It will soon have multiple heavy lifters and reusable vehicles, such as: Falcon 9 Heavy, New Glenn (Blue Origin), SLS. It will soon have 2 operating space capsules (Boeing Starliner and SpaceX Dragon), far more advanced than the old Soyuz. It will have a capsule for operation beyond Earth Orbit (Orion).
If we get to Space Science Russia is basically non-existing. NASA regularly sends probes/rovers to Mars and the outer planets, including Pluto. It operates various space telescopes for the detection of Exoplanets among other things. Even ESA ranks far above Russia or anyone else when it comes to space exploration/science. Meanwhile the commercial satellite market (mostly communcation satellites and Earth observation) is dominated by the US and Europe as well.

[Beren]

This doesn't have much to do with space research anyways. The Russians mean to demonstrate spectacularly that American ABM systems are useless.