Airbus Space & Defence is already involved in an $85 million joint-venture with would-be satellite operator OneWeb to build a satellite manufacturing factory at Port Canaveral, in Florida. The plan is to shortly start building the first of an initial 900 satellites for the SoftBank-backed OneWeb project to girdle the planet with a new constellation of broadband craft.

The facility should be in operation this autumn and turning out around 2-3 satellites per day. OneWeb has an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to authorise another 1200 satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and taking its planned constellation to a total of 1980 craft in orbit, plus spares.

OneWeb has an additional request in with the FCC for an additional 1280 satellites which will work in a Mid-Earth Orbit (MEO).

It is likely that the Airbus/OneWeb factory in Florida will build all of these satellites, but the company also has a ‘Plan B’ which is to win US military contracts for small satellites.

The USA’s influential Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is known to be planning a military suite of LEO satellites under its Blackjack program.

DARPA is reported to be planning to award contracts worth $117.5 million as early as August.

Airbus is on record as saying that its initial plans for Florida call for 10 satellites a week to be turned out on conventional eight-hour workdays, but this production rate could be increased if outside orders start to flow.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Virgin Galactic in stock split
2. Thuraya-3 suffers major problem
3. AST SpaceMobile hit by Class Action
4. Optimism under threat at SES
5. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
6. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
7. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
8. IRIS2 already in trouble?
9. Intelsat contemplates next steps

Categories: Blogs, Broadband, Inside Satellite, Satellite