Eutelsat’s OneWeb division has a batch of 20 of its broadband satellites enroute in air–conditioned comfort from the Airbus–owned factory in Florida to California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base inreadiness for launch.

The 20 satellites are the final group of OneWeb’s Generation 1 craft. They will be used as orbital back–up and as replacements for craft that fail while in orbit. OneWeb, in June last year said that four of the – then – 640 satellite launched had failed.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, OneWeb’s executive chairman and currently major shareholder through his Bharti Global business, speaking at an event in Paris in June 2023, said satellite operators must prepare for failed satellites. Mittal explained that all of OneWeb’s craft were designed with easy de–orbiting to take place.

SpaceX will carry out the launch on one of its Falcon 9 rockets during September and be placed into polar orbits. The OneWeb constellation is designed to have around 648 microsatellites (and the plan calls for 60 spares), each around 150 kg each, operating in Ku–band from low Earth orbit.

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Categories: Articles, Satellite

Tags: eutelsat, OneWeb