Chris Forrester, of Advanced Television and a Senior Contributor to Satnews Publishers, is reporting that OneWeb, which is building a mega-constellation of 900 satellites and had planned to launch their first batch of craft later this year, has reportedly slipped the lift-off dates.
OneWeb is working with satellite builder Airbus to build 10 debut satellites in Toulouse, and is also constructing – with OneWeb — a jointly-owned satellite factory in Florida to manufacture the vast bulk of the proposed mega-system starting in 2019.
Artistic rendition of the OneWeb constellation.
Russian news agency Sputnik reported, “Issues in spacecraft production have put off the first OneWeb launch from Kourou until at least February 2019. The rest of the launches have also shifted. The first launch from Baikonur will take place in summer or early fall 2019 and in 2020 from [Russia’s new launch site] Vostochny.”
The OneWeb plan is to launch an initial 648 satellites (plus spares) to help provide a global service to hundreds of millions of potential broadband users who have little or no access to the Internet.
OneWeb is backed to the tune of $1.7 billion by a range of equity investors including Japanese media conglomerate SoftBank, Virgin, Qualcomm, Intelsat and others.
Virgin Orbit, backed by Sir Richard Branson, has contracts to launch about 39 satellites.
