Bharti owned satcom company, OneWeb, has successfully completed the launch of 34 new satellites. The company has confirmed the contact with all 34 of them. With this launch, the total tally of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites from OneWeb revolving around the atmosphere has reached 288. The 34 new satellites from the company have been launched by Arianespace from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Note that even though there are 288 satellites from the company already in space, 360 more satellites are still left to be launched.
OneWeb Preparing Well for Global Expansion
OneWeb has confirmed that it is on track to launch more satellites and will also commence its services this year. Further, the company said that it would start expanding globally in 2022. One of the target markets for OneWeb is India which it plans to enter in mid-2022 along with other satcom companies such as Starlink and Project Juniper from Amazon.
The liftoff took place on 21 August at 11:13 BST. OneWeb’s satellites separated from the rocket and were dispensed in nine batches over a period of 3 hours 45 minutes, with the signal acquisition on all 34 satellites confirmed.
Neil Masterson, a OneWeb CEO, has confirmed that with the completion of the company’s ‘5 to 50’ mission, OneWeb is building on its success and has ambitious plans of conduction back to back launch programs till the end of 2021. Masterson said that OneWeb had seen huge demand for satellite broadband services in the global market, and that is why the company is excited about launching commercial services soon.
OneWeb wants to provide global satellite broadband connectivity and ensure that areas that have been ignored by terrestrial telecom operators can receive seamless connectivity. This will open up a totally new market in the economy as more than commercial; satellite broadband will have enterprise use cases. Now companies can set up small scale offices even in the remotest locations of the world.
