OneWeb signs up to LeoLabs collision avoidance
February 4, 2022
By Chris Forrester
LeoLabs and OneWeb have entered into a multi-year agreement where LeoLabs will be providing collision avoidance to support operational safety of flight for OneWeb’s growing fleet of spacecraft.
“With OneWeb as a valued LeoLabs customer, LeoLabs Collision Avoidance is now utilised by the three largest constellations in the world — SpaceX, OneWeb, and Planet (among others), constituting operational support for more than 2,400 active satellites today — representing ~60 per cent of all operational satellites in LEO,” said a LeoLabs statement.
LeoLabs says it is the only commercial Space Situational Awareness (SSA) provider that offers a true end-to-end collision avoidance service built on its own tracking data and already scaled to support the rapidly growing LEO environment.
“LeoLabs Collision Avoidance is driven by our phased-array radar network that routinely tracks 18,000+ resident space objects (RSOs) in LEO, and our cloud-based space operations platform that creates millions of data products every hour for our customers,” said the company.
John Guiney, Vice President of Fleet Operations at OneWeb, commented: “OneWeb believes space is a shared natural resource that can be harnessed for good today and should be protected for use for future generations. Today’s agreement is another positive step as part of our responsible space policies. LeoLabs’ Collision Avoidance tools will further enhance our ability to monitor our constellation as we prepare to launch global service in 2022. We look forward to continuing to play a lead role in responsible operations and space safety.”