OneWeb to Start Building LEO Broadband Satellites in the UK

Space firm OneWeb, which is owned by a consortium of the UK Government and working to build a new global mega constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), has confirmed earlier speculation by announcing that the company will invest £2.2bn ($3bn) to shift manufacturing from the USA to UK.

At present OneWeb has already launched a total of 358 small c.150kg Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites into space – orbiting at an altitude of around 1,200km – and their initial plan is to build a constellation of 648 (588 are needed for global coverage, while the rest are for redundancy), which is enough for a reasonable level of global coverage by around June 2022. A beta service is due to launch before the end of this year.

The satellites are currently all being manufactured at their Florida facility with Airbus, which is a minority shareholder. In the past there have been suggestions that this could be moved to the UK, which is something that Debra Facktor, Head of Airbus US Space Systems, flatly rejected in August 2020 (here). But shortly after that, Richard Franklin, MD for Defence and Space at the UK arm of Airbus, took a different view: “There’s a real intent and desire in Airbus that manufacturing is done from the UK” (here).

The good news is that Chris McLaughlin, OneWeb’s Chief of Government Affairs, has confirmed to MPs that they will start to develop a UK manufacturing base for their satellites next year (CityAM). The first LEOs or MEOs should then roll off the production line by 2024-25. Obviously, this will have no impact on their first-generation satellites, so it’s more focused upon future development and that will require a lot more funding.

“By 2024-25 we will be building in the UK,” said McLaughlin. However, a decision on whether to continue working with Airbus or find a new manufacture has not been taken, although the most plausible outcome is that Airbus UK would simply take over the reins.

At present OneWeb has approval for a total of 2,000 satellites (although they’re seeking to go beyond that) and 1,280 of those will be a second-generation model that could sit in a higher Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) of 8,500km, which are also expected to introduce enhanced navigation and positioning features.

Richard Franklin has previously suggested that design work on the second generation of OneWeb’s satellite constellation could begin around 2022-23 (they’re already preparing a satellite to test some new technologies) and be ready for full production a year later, which seems likely to push the first launch of that fleet into c.2024-25 territory – this matches up nicely with McLaughlin’s comment above.

MEOs generally deliver much better network coverage, although you do suffer a hit on connection latency (higher altitude = slower response times). However, this could be mitigated by directing latency sensitive services over LEOs and then using MEOs for larger file transfers etc., or something along those lines. But all of this assumes OneWeb is a success, and it’s currently too early to judge that before the service has even launched.