A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat booster and 36 British OneWeb communications satellites blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport, Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos announced in a live broadcast on its website on Monday.

After about nine minutes, the head unit of the Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket comprising the Fregat booster and 36 British OneWeb communications satellites successfully separated from the rocket’s upper stage.

"The head unit separates from the carrier rocket’s upper stage," the launch commentator announced.

The Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket blasted off from the Baikonur spaceport at 16:10 Moscow time on December 27. It will take the booster over eight hours to orbit the satellites. The satellites will separate in several stages. After the process has been completed, the OneWeb orbital cluster will increase to 394 satellites.

This is the first launch of as many as 36 OneWeb satellites from the Baikonur spaceport. Before that, Russian Soyuz rockets orbited 34 British communications satellites in each launch from the spaceport in Kazakhstan.