OneWeb Launches 36 Telecom Satellites for its Constellation with Russia

On Monday, a Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East. This rocket carried 36 satellites of the UK-Bharti Airtel backed OneWeb.

OneWeb Builds More of its Constellation

OneWeb aims to provide satellite broadband across the world. Based in London, the company is currently working to complete its lower earth orbit satellite constellation. With that, the company aims to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband.

Notably, OneWeb stands in direct competition with Amazon's Kuiper and SpaceX's Starlink. However, it is somewhere in the middle of these two in terms of development.

With this launch, the company now has 182 satellites in orbit. In a stark contrast, Starlink has over a thousand, while Kuiper has none.

Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, took to Twitter to release the images of the launch.

https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1386517135904681987

OneWeb also celebrated the launch of 36 new satellites on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/EutelsatOneWeb/status/1386544585762119682

This was its third batch of satellites launched from Vostochny Cosmodrome. Last month, Russia had launched another set of 36 satellites for OneWeb. The first batch of satellites were launched in December last year.

The company, partly owned by the UK Government and partly by Bharti Global, is looking to set up some 650 satellites in orbit. This will enable them to provide enhanced broadband, targeting the remotest regions of the world.

It first launched its satellites more than two years ago. That was also onboard a Soyuz rocket, albeit those first 6 were launched from French Guiana. Since then, the company has put up a good number of satellites in orbit.

The company is targeting its commercial launch in 2022.