Despite the fact that SpaceX and OneWeb are competitors, Elon Musk's company has agreed to launch
What is known
OneWeb is trying to create a low-Earthorbit a constellation of 648 satellites. In February 2022, a rocket from the Russian company Roscosmos was already standing at the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, awaiting launch, but due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the launch was canceled.
Yesterday, SpaceX launched 40satellites, increasing the OneWeb constellation to 502 spacecraft. A Falcon 9 rocket was used to launch. This is enough to cover 80% of the territory of our planet. Three more launches are planned for 2023. One batch of satellites will be launched into orbit by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Falcon 9 delivers 40 @OneWeb satellites to orbit and lands on Landing Zone 1 pic.twitter.com/ZJvRtVnOB8
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 9, 2022
OneWeb provides satellite Internet services in Alaska, as well as in Canada, the UK and Greenland. The company is already working on second-generation satellites with improved performance.
OneWeb representatives say that the marketSatellite Internet is growing rapidly, so there is room for both companies to complement each other. However, they acknowledge that the customer bases of OneWeb and SpaceX may overlap.