Russia's homegrown Starlink rival is having trouble staying airborne.
The latest batch of Rassvet satellites is falling out of orbit, according to PCMag. It's not an isolated incident. Earlier versions of the Rassvet satellites de-orbited back in June, and since then, newer launches have failed to even reach their intended orbits in the first place. That's two distinct failure modes within months of each other: hardware that reaches space but can't stay there, and hardware that doesn't get where it's supposed to go at all.
That pattern matters more than any single lost satellite. A broadband constellation needs a large, steadily maintained fleet to deliver real coverage, and repeated losses across different launches point to a deeper reliability problem in the program rather than one unlucky batch. If Rassvet can't consistently put satellites where they belong, it can't credibly compete on service.
Building a Starlink alternative was always going to be hard. Keeping satellites in orbit is apparently harder.