UK-based OneWeb's 36 satellites ready for launch from India by heaviest rocket LVM3

If all goes as per plan, India's heaviest rocket will lift off with the second batch of 36 OneWeb satellites in March 2023. This will mark the second commercial mission by India's heavy-lifter rocket Launch Vehicle Mark3 (LVM3) and an important milestone for OneWeb, the UK-based firm that is working towards providing internet connectivity on earth, via a constellation of broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit. OneWeb announced on Monday that their team in India had completed the integration of 36 satellites, ahead of the upcoming launch with the Indian Space Research Organization.

OneWeb's latest batch of 36 satellites has flown a distance of 9000 miles- from Florida, USA to the Southern Indian city of Chennai in the last week of January. The special containers with the satellites were then driven to India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh, a 100km distance from Chennai. At a clean room facility in the spaceport, the satellites and their components were then unpacked, assembled and integrated into their dispenser. The dispenser is the mechanism that sits atop the final stage of the rocket and eventually releases the satellite into its orbit.

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On the occasion of the maiden OneWeb launch from India, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, OneWeb had told WION that their firm had signed up for two launches with ISRO's commercial arm New Space India Limited(NSIL), at a cost of more than Rs.1000cr. He had also expressed hope to get the necessary authorization from the Indian Government by early-2023, in order to start offering OneWeb's space-based internet services by mid-2023.

OneWeb plans to have a constellation of 648 satellites in LEO to offer its broadband services across the world. The 1st generation of OneWeb's constellation would comprise a total of 648 satellites. The next few launches of OneWeb, which will include launches by ISRO and SpaceX, are meant to complete the Generation 1 constellation of OneWeb. In the coming years, the UK-based firm would also be adding a more constellation to augment its reach and connectivity.

On October 23, 2022, the first OneWeb launch carried out by ISRO's LVM3 rocket marked many firsts- the first commercial mission of LVM3, the heaviest payload (5.8tons) being carried by LVM3, the most number of satellites carried by LVM3. That was also the 5th consecutive successful mission by India's heaviest rocket. ISRO would like to continue that run in March 2023, in order to further establish the capabilities and reliability of the launch vehicle, attract more customers and thereby earn revenue from providing launch services.

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