Technology Apr 30, 2026 · 1 min read

Russia cloaks launch schedule after spaceport falls in Ukraine's sights

"We had serious inbound attempts to the cosmodrome that day."

AR
Ars Technica
by Stephen Clark
Russia cloaks launch schedule after spaceport falls in Ukraine's sights

If you believe official Russian reports, the country's northern spaceport has come under attack from drones on multiple occasions in the last few months.

The drones did not succeed in striking the spaceport, but the attempted attacks come as Russia ramps up activity at Plesetsk Cosmodrome to deploy a new constellation of Internet and data relay satellites akin to SpaceX's Starlink, a space-based network underpinning much of Ukraine's military communications infrastructure. Plesetsk is a military base located in Russia's Arkhangelsk region, some 500 miles north of Moscow.

The Russian space agency's first acknowledgment of an attempted drone attack at Plesetsk came a few weeks ago, when the head of Roscosmos, the Russian state corporation for civilian spaceflight, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

Read full article

Comments

AR
Source

This article was originally published by Ars Technica and written by Stephen Clark .

Read original article on Ars Technica
Back to Discover

Reading List