The war in Ukraine ended the use of Soyuz launchers for OneWeb. The fallback solution? SpaceX.
The horizon is clearing for OneWeb. The British company announced on March 21, 2022 that it had reached an agreement with SpaceX to deliver its future telecommunications satellites. The deal reached with the American group thus puts an end to a brief period of uncertainty, born of the war waged by Russia against Ukraine since the end of February.
” The first liftoff with SpaceX is scheduled for 2022 and will be added to OneWeb’s in-orbit constellation, which currently has 428 satellites, or 66% of the fleet. », Develops OneWeb in a press release. The constellation of satellites should eventually have 648 machines positioned in low orbit, all around the Earth.
OneWeb intends to offer access to the Internet from space, thanks to a large fleet of satellites. This broadband offer rivals other existing operators, such as Starlink, but also ViaSat. Some of its formulas are also available in France, with specialized service providers. There is of course Starlink, but also companies like Nordnet or Bigblu.
SpaceX takes over
For those who follow space news closely, the unexpected rapprochement between OneWeb and SpaceX has a certain flavor, because SpaceX is precisely the company that markets Starlink. In fact, SpaceX will, with this partnership, participate directly in the growth of a competing satellite network, by mobilizing its Falcon 9 rockets.
Did SpaceX lack common sense? The reflection, in reality, may be reversed: Elon Musk’s company may have thought that OneWeb would have ended up sooner or later by finding a backup solution, which will lead to the same result – the OneWeb network will end up be completed. Therefore, you might as well be the company that will receive payment for the launches.
If OneWeb and Starlink each operate a constellation of satellites, the two companies do not address exactly the same market: Starlink targets individuals directly, like a traditional ISP. OneWeb, on the other hand, has a rather “B2B” approach, offering services to telecom operators, ISPs and specific companies.
These two companies should not be stepping on each other in the short term, but nothing says that their business model will not evolve in such a way that they end up entering into more direct competition. Side orbit, the two firms can be quiet: Starlink is at 550 km altitude, where OneWeb evolves much higher (1,200 km).
Growing dispute with Russia
Until now, OneWeb relied on Soyuz rockets fired from the Guiana Space Center. Since 2019, there have been no less than thirteen launches, each time with just over thirty OneWeb satellites shipped. But the outbreak of war made it impossible to continue this cooperation: at the end of February, Russia put an end to Soyuz take-offs from Kourou.
Added to this was a diplomatic issue: Russia was opposed to OneWeb covering Russia, on the grounds that the United Kingdom, which took partial control of the company, could use it for spy. The start of the war aggravated tensions around the project: Moscow summoned London to give up its participation, obviously in vain.
Faced with these irreconcilable positions, it was expected that Russia would refuse to make its Soyuz launcher and its launch bases available to this network of satellites. The OneWeb board of directors has at the same time voted to suspend all launches from Baikonur, which is another departure base used by OneWeb, with the Vostotchny cosmodrome.