Meteor M No. 2-3 Is next up for launch, but when exactly? We really don’t know.
UPDATE 03-03-2023
The latest update from the Vostochny Cosmodrome and their Launch Schedule for Meteor-M No.2-3 aboard the Soyuz 2.1a/Fregat-M has again been delayed to June 2023, with no launch date or time specified. If and when it launches it will be from Cosmodrome Site 1S at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Siberia, Russian Federation.
The long history of the Meteor M 2-3 delays
By the middle of 2020, the launch of Meteor M2-3 shifted to the end of 2021, Meteor-M2-4 to early 2022 and Meteor-M2-5 to the first half of 2023. Then Roscosmos changed the launch of Meteor M2-3 to 2023, possibly in February 2023. But, Russia is not very transparent with the launch schedule of unmanned rockets. And they have an obligation first for manned flights. Interestingly enough in my search for information, I contacted a private space tourist company that offers ground tours for rocket launch viewing in Russia, they could not give me a date for the Fregat Launch of Meteor M2-3, just telling me, “it will launch when the rubles say it will”.
Rossiya Segodnya Press stated in an article in August 2022, “Spacecraft numbered 3 and 4 should be launched in 2023, the fifth – in 2024, and the sixth – in 2025. Next, launches of new-generation Meteor-MP spacecraft should begin.” (The new MP spacecraft will not have LRPT)
Russian officials promised to orbit as many as four Meteor-M satellites by 2015, but these plans have been delayed by years. Meteor-M No. 2-3 satellite, which was custom-designed to observe oceans with a high-resolution phased-array radar has been in storage since 2016.
