SpaceX launched 40 internet satellites of the OneWeb constellation, its competition

sarahjay1 (69)memberin Popular STEM • 2 years ago

(YouTube / SpaceX / Screenshot)

SpaceX launched a new batch of 40 Internet satellites from the OneWeb orbital constellation into space using a Falcon 9 rocket.

The ironic side of the news is that OneWeb in the satellite Internet segment directly competes with SpaceX itself.

OneWeb is a British project of a global constellation of Internet satellites, which will consist of 648 vehicles in low Earth orbit.

The project is similar to the Starlink system of SpaceX, however, in the latter case, the number of satellites will be much larger - up to tens of thousands.

Initially, Roscosmos launched 428 OneWeb satellites into orbit using the Soyuz-2.1b rocket, but the cooperation was canceled in March of this year.

After the launch of more than half of the group, the Russian space agency demanded guarantees that OneWeb satellites would not be used for military purposes and did not return the satellites to the customer.

NEW CONTRACTS
As a result, OneWeb signed a contract with SpaceX to launch three more batches of satellites using the Falcon 9 rockets

The satellite company will also have two more launches using the Indian LVM-3 rocket, since the British branch of the Indian company Bharti Enterprises is a shareholder in the project.

The first launch under the new contracts took place on October 21, 2022 - an Indian rocket delivered 36 satellites into orbit.

Now, last December 9, the Falcon 9 FT Block 5 rocket lifted off from pad LC-39A with a new batch of OneWeb satellites

Then, 58 minutes after launch, a three-stage satellite deployment process began, which took half an hour.

Thus, the group was replenished with 40 more satellites.

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