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Future OneWeb Broadband Satellites to Launch on Rockets in India

Thursday, Apr 21st, 2022 (3:38 pm) - Score 984
OneWeb First Generation Satellite in Orbit

British-registered satellite broadband company OneWeb, which is partly owned by the UK Government, has complemented their recent launch deal with SpaceX by signing an additional contract for rocket launches with New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Just to recap. At the end of February (2022), Russia invaded Ukraine and set off a chain of events that continues to unfold. The fallout from that (i.e. heavy sanctions and restrictions against Putin’s regime) also caught OneWeb and prevented further launches (here), which up until recently had been busy sending many of their LEO platforms into space aboard Russia’s Soyuz rockets.

OneWeb has already launched a total of 428 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 coverage – the rest are for redundancy), which is enough for a reasonable level of global coverage.

The company, as part of their solution to this crisis, signed a deal to hitch a ride aboard SpaceX’s rockets, which also happens to run the Starlink service – a rival mega constellation of LEO broadband satellites. The first launch with SpaceX is anticipated sometime in 2022, but the terms of this agreement remain confidential, and it was unclear how many of their future launches would benefit from the deal.

However, it’s worth remembering that India’s Bharti Global is one of OneWeb’s biggest and most significant shareholders, thus there has been some pressure for India to take a greater role in future launches. As such, it comes as little surprise that OneWeb has just signed a new launch deal with the commercial arm of the Indian space agency (ISRO), New Space India Limited (NSIL).

Sunil Bharti Mittal, OneWeb Executive Chairman, said:

“This is yet another historic day for collaboration in space, thanks to the shared ambition and vision of New Space India and OneWeb. This most recent agreement on launch plans adds considerable momentum to the development of OneWeb’s network, as we work together across the space industry toward our common goal of connecting communities globally.”

The first launch with New Space India is anticipated in 2022 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. But much as with the SpaceX deal, OneWeb has yet to reveal any solid details of their plan and how many LEOs will actually be handled by NSIL. Nevertheless, we understand that they’ll hitch a ride on India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 3 rocket (or possibly also Mark 2). The medium-lift Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is another option.

OneWeb’s commercial service is initially working to serve parts of the UK, Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic seas (i.e. the 50th parallel and above) – albeit focused more on government, maritime, aviation and enterprise needs. Community mobile (backhaul) and broadband connectivity for rural homes is anticipated to come later, most likely via partner ISPs like BT (here) and Eutelsat (KONNECT).

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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Comments
4 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Yatta! says:

    Indian launch vehicles were where my money was after the 2020 bailout, amazed it took so long and a war for them to switch from the Russian Soyuz.

    The blood-sodden criminal lunatic Putin’s Russia couldn’t be trusted then and certainly not now.

    Note to Mark, GSLV and PSLV are both ‘medium-lift’ launch vehicles, their names are largely irrelevant to their capabilities, rather describing their primary designed usages, both are capable to launch payloads into LEO.

    It’s likely OneWeb will use GSLV Mark III as its payload capacity / fairing volume are far closer to Soyuz-2 than PSLV, the latter would offer a significant reduction in both regards thus likely wouldn’t be cost effective.

    1. Avatar photo TOOL says:

      Putin evil.

      India friends with and funding Putin.

      What does that make India?

  2. Avatar photo Polish Economic Migrant says:

    Just to recap, India supports Russia in this war and recently prevented from landing Japanese plane with aid for Ukraine. Also India has long term privileged strategic partnership signed with Soviet Union and renewed with Russia in 1993.

    1. Avatar photo Keynesian says:

      Disgraceful isn’t it. I wish they had not chosen to partner with India.

Comments are closed

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