SpaceX plans to send a series of internet satellites into orbit for another company early Sunday (October 20).
SpaceX launched the final batch of Eutelsat OneWeb’s V1 satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday at 1:13 a.m. EDT (05:13 GMT, 10:13 p.m. California local time). The plan is to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
This live broadcast can be viewed through SpaceX’s X (formerly Twitter) stream.
If all goes as planned, Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth in Landing Zone 4 at Vandenberg approximately eight minutes after liftoff.
Related: SpaceX launches 40 OneWeb internet satellites into orbit, lands rocket
The latest launch of Eutelsat OneWeb in collaboration with SpaceX on May 20, 2023, brought the company’s satellite fleet to 634. At the time, Eutelsat OneWeb said the new batch of 16 satellites would be enough to roll out its services globally.
“OneWeb plans to offer global coverage this year and is already in the process of expanding its services to customers around the world,” company officials said. mentioned at the time. (At the time, the company was known as OneWeb. The merger with Eutelsat took place in September 2023.)
“With the addition of the satellites deployed with this launch, OneWeb will increase the resiliency and redundancy of our constellation as we expand our services to our growing business and government customer base. ”
Prior to that effort, SpaceX launched three sets of OneWeb satellites with 40 spacecraft each.
SpaceX’s contract to launch Eutelsat OneWeb satellites is backdated to March 2022 after Eutelsat OneWeb pivoted from a deal to use Russian-made Soyuz rockets through French company Arianespace.
Immediately after Russia’s unauthorized invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos announced that it would not launch 36 OneWeb satellites aboard Soyuz rockets unless two conditions were met.
The conditions were that the spacecraft would not be used for military purposes and that Britain would remove itself as an investor in the company. OneWeb disagreed, and the Soyuz, packed with satellites, rolled off the launch pad at the Roscosmos-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
