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OneWeb, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications company backed by Bharti, announced that it successfully launched 40 satellites to low-Earth orbit with SpaceX yesterday. OneWeb is building an LEO satellite internet service that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink.
OneWeb says that the 40 satellites were successfully deployed after they launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The satellites separated from the rocket and were dispensed into three separation groups over a period of 40 minutes, with the last separation occurring one hour and 35 minutes after launch. The company confirmed signal acquisition on all of the satellites.
With this launch, OneWeb has 582 operational satellites in orbit, which is more than 89 per cent of the 628 satellites that the company plans to have in orbit as part of its Gen 1 constellation. The company says that it will complete the constellation with a launch that is set to take place later this month with ISRO and NSIL.
The LEO that the satellites have been launched into has been getting increasingly crowded in recent years, thanks in no small part due to companies like SpaceX and OneWeb itself. Earlier this week, NASA announced that the International Space Station had to fire its thrusters for more than six minutes in order to avoid collision with an Argentine Earth-observation satellite.
