Russia to venture into IoT with new satellite system

Roscosmos, or Russia's state space corporation, has planned to venture into the Internet of things (IoT) with the launch of a new satellite system named 'Marathon'.

A report released by the Moscow-based space agency on Sunday stated that the new satellite system will be a part of Russia's Sphere satellite constellation, which will be fully established by 2026.

The federation's GLONASS navigation, a satellite communication system and a data relay satellite set-up will be the other equipment in the constellation.

The number of satellites in the Marathon system have not been revealed yet.

Andrei Ionin, Russian Academy of Cosmonautics' Corresponding Member told Sputnik, "There are several segments of the satellite communication."

"While [USA's] Iridium has been long operating successfully on the voice satellite communications market. [USA's] OneWeb and Starlink will dominate the broadband Internet segment," he said.

"The Internet of things is the third segment. [Work in] this segment will be successful if services are provided at the lowest prices, as the systems that I have mentioned will provide such services as well," Ionin underscored.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved the Sphere constellation project, which involves the construction and deployment of 640 satellites.