OneWeb has 218 craft in orbit
June 4, 2021
By Chris Forrester
The May 29th launch of an additional 36 satellites into their orbital slots means that OneWeb is close to 80 per cent of its needs to launch initial services. The launch took the OneWeb fleet to 218 satellites.
OneWeb’s near-term target is to reach those nations and regions north of 50 degrees Latitude well before the end of 2021.
The next batch of 36 is scheduled for launch a month from now, on July 1st, subject to the usual technical and weather constraints. Following on from the early July launch will be another batch, currently on target for August 2nd.
Both these future launches will be handled as usual by Arianespace using a Soyuz 2.1b rocket from Russia’s Far East cosmodrome at Vostochny. These two launches will take the total fleet size to 290 satellites.