The company said that it had established communication with all 36 satellites put into orbit on the night of May 29
LONDON, May 29. /TASS/. The British company OneWeb will be able to start providing communication services after the next launch of its satellites into low-Earth orbit. As stated in a message posted on Saturday on the OneWeb page on Twitter, by the end of the year it should provide coverage in all areas above the 50th parallel of northern latitude, including almost all regions of Russia.
"The mission is completed successfully. There are already 218 of our satellites in orbit, and there is only one launch left before we can provide communications services north of the 50th Parallel by the end of this year," the company said. The next launch of OneWeb satellites from Vostochny is expected on July 1.
The company's technical director, Massimiliano Ladovac, also confirmed that the company has established communication with all 36 satellites launched into orbit on Saturday night by the Soyuz rocket, which was launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome. "Thank you to Arianespace and our Russian partners for another great launch," he wrote.
During the live broadcast of the launch, which was conducted by Roscosmos, OneWeb commercial director in Russia Mikhail Kaigorodov said that after the next launch from Vostochny and the expansion of the OneWeb group to 254 spacecraft, the company will provide " radio coverage of the earth's surface above 50 degrees north latitude, including the Arctic zone and almost the entire territory of the Russian Federation." After alpha and beta testing of its communications system in the fourth quarter of 2021, the company will be " fully prepared to provide commercial services in this territory." The second phase of the deployment of the first generation of OneWeb satellites, due to be completed in 2022, will allow the company to provide global coverage around the globe.
According to Kaigorodov, OneWeb does not exclude that next year Russian users will be able to access the company's services through telecommunications operators that will act as its partners. He stressed that OneWeb is ready not only to provide the Russian authorities with "all the necessary documentation to make a decision by the regulator on the allocation of frequencies, but also to deploy a temporary segment of the infrastructure for a comprehensive study of the technical characteristics of the network" and verify that the declared parameters correspond to real ones. According to him, three ground-based satellite communication terminals may be deployed on the territory of the Russian Federation in the near future. Previously, OneWeb faced difficulties in obtaining frequencies to operate on the territory of the Russian Federation, but has the opportunity to submit an updated application.
OneWeb Project
To date, OneWeb, with the help of Roscosmos, has already launched 218 satellites into Earth orbit, and in 2022 it expects to complete the formation of the first generation of its satellite constellation of 648 vehicles. In total, the company plans to place 7 thousand satellites in orbit, although it initially assumed that their number would reach 48 thousand.
The American company SpaceX, which is implementing the Starlink project, is also creating its own grouping of thousands of communication satellites in low orbit. OneWeb expects that the first generation of its satellites will help solve the urgent problem of providing the Arctic regions with high-speed Internet access.