Definitely life is not a long calm river for the OneWeb constellation. After escaping from bankruptcy in the spring of 2020, the minority-owned company by the British government (17.6%) is today blocked in the deployment of its constellation due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. On Wednesday, Moscow demanded the withdrawal of London before March 4 in the capital of the company OneWeb as well as binding legal guarantees on its non-military use, otherwise it threatened to no longer send satellites of the constellation into orbit. London immediately refused Moscow’s conditions. Thursday, the OneWeb’s board, under pressure from Britain, voted to suspend launches from Baikonur. Private shareholders must have had it bad, starting with the Indian group Bharti (30% of OneWeb).
On Friday, the director general of the Russian space agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin promised OneWeb “bankruptcy”. “Russian counter-sanctions in space will lead to billions in losses for the US and UK, OneWeb awaits bankruptcy. The company will not be able to fully deploy the orbital constellation”, he explained. Roscosmos assures that OneWeb has no other way “short term” to send its satellites into space, apart from the use of Soyuz launchers.
428 out of 648 satellites
Oproduced by Arianespace on behalf of OneWeb, le launch ST38, which was to take place overnight from Friday to Saturday from Baikonur, has been postponed “sine die following the conditions set by Roscosmos to continue operations”, explained the commercial subsidiary of ArianeGroup in a press release published on Friday. Of the 16 Soyuz launches signed between OneWeb and Arianespace in September 2020, there were only six left to perform, including flight ST38.
Currently, the constellation has since the last launch in Kourou on February 10, 428 satellites in orbit. Or 66% of the fleet of 648 LEO (low orbit) satellites programmed by OneWeb. Probably insufficient to provide global connectivity with high speed, low latency and above all without interruption of services. OneWeb was to start providing a global service from 2022.
And now ?
Several questions arise about the future of this constellation. In the short term, what will become of the 36 satellites which were to be launched overnight from Friday to Saturday? On the industrial level, there is a risk that the Russians will do reverse-engineering work on OneWeb satellites to copy and improve their know-how. Especially that Dmitry Rogozin, who ordered to stop all launches of Russian launchers on behalf of OneWeb, considered that he did not have guarantees from the OneWeb company that his “constellation satellites will not be used for military purposes”. In his press release, Arianespace promised to work “with its partners to ensure the state of the goods and materials currently in Baikonur”. Not sure, however, that the European launcher marketing company currently controls anything in Baikonur (Kazakhstan), whose cosmodrome is operated by Russia.
In the medium term, Arianespace will have to find a “back-up” at Soyuz on behalf of OneWeb, which could also find a solution itself. The ArianeGroup subsidiary claims to be “in close contact with its customers and the French and European public authorities to deal with all the consequences of this situation and build the necessary alternatives”. In this case, however, Arianespace risks finding itself particularly alone. Because it is not at all sure that France and the European Union (EU) will help him find a solution to facilitate the deployment of a rival constellation to that decided… by the EU and, more precisely , by the European Commissioner, Thierry Breton, supported by France. In mid-February, the 27 countries of the European Union agreed in Toulouse on the need for the EU to have its own constellation of encrypted communications satellites.