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posted by janrinok on Tuesday March 22 2022, @05:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the 3,2,1,launch dept.

OneWeb to Restart Internet Satellite Launches Using SpaceX Rockets:

After canceling business with Russia's space program, OneWeb is tapping rival SpaceX to help it launch its remaining internet satellites into orbit.

"We are pleased to announce that we have entered into a launch agreement withSpaceX that will enable OneWeb to resume satellite launches," UK-based OneWeb announced on Twitter today. The first launch of the OneWeb satellites using SpaceX rockets is scheduled for sometime later this year, the company added.

OneWeb previously relied on Russia's Roscosmos to launch the satellites. However, the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions from Europe caused Roscosmos to essentially retaliate by postponing an upcoming launch of OneWeb satellites.

Roscosmos then demanded the UK government divest itself from OneWeb. In response, the company canceled all launches through Russia's space program.

OneWeb's contingency plan of using SpaceX is a little surprising since both companies are competing in the internet satellite market. This has resulted in some bickering amongst each other in government regulatory filings. Last year, for example, OneWeb accused SpaceX's satellite internet system of colliding with its own.

SpaceX wins OneWeb launch contracts, demonstrating extreme flexibility

Demonstrating a level of flexibility that no other commercial launch provider on Earth can likely match, SpaceX and OneWeb have entered into a major launch contract barely three weeks after Russia kicked the satellite internet company off of its Soyuz rockets.

Beginning in early 2020, OneWeb has launched approximately 430 operational small internet satellites – about two-thirds of its first constellation – on a dozen different Russian Soyuz 2.1b and ST-B rockets, including a mission completed as recently as February 10th, 2022. That nominal – albeit slow – deployment ground to a violent halt alongside Russia's second unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. Within a week, extraordinary Western economic sanctions pushed the unstable head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency to retaliate by both ending the practice of European-owned Soyuz launches and holding OneWeb's 13th operational launch hostage.

Another three weeks later, outside of increasingly tense and reluctant cooperation on the International Space Station, the relationship between Russian and Western spaceflight programs has effectively ceased to exist. That includes all 6-7 of OneWeb's remaining Soyuz launch contracts, each of which the company had already paid more than $50 million for. Though OneWeb technicians were able to escape the increasingly hostile country, Russia effectively repossessed (i.e. stole) OneWeb's remaining rockets and its 13th batch of operational satellites.

That left OneWeb in an unsurprisingly precarious situation. Having already gone bankrupt once, a major delay could be financially catastrophic for the company. Normally, procuring half a dozen near-term launch contracts at the last second would be virtually impossible. Indeed, ignoring a certain US company, no other launch provider on Earth could even theoretically find or build enough capacity to launch the last third of OneWeb's constellation without at least a one or two-year delay. Luckily for OneWeb, SpaceX does exist.

Also at Space News, NYT, The Guardian, Reuters, and The Verge:

Just a few days before the launch was set to take place, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, demanded that Russia would only launch OneWeb's satellites if the company promised that the spacecraft would not be used for military purposes. Rogozin also demanded that the British government divest its entire stake in OneWeb. In 2020, the UK invested roughly $500 million in OneWeb in order to save the company from bankruptcy, and the UK government became a major shareholder along with Indian telecommunications company Bharti Global.

OneWeb and the UK refused to submit to the demands, and the company wound up suspending all further launches of its satellites from Kazakhstan. Roscosmos rolled back the Soyuz rocket carrying the 36 OneWeb satellites from its launchpad, and the satellites have yet to be returned to OneWeb. The company isn't sure what happened to the spacecraft or if they'll ever be returned. "The thing about the satellites is honestly they're the least of our problems," Chris McLaughlin, chief of government, regulatory, and engagement at OneWeb, tells The Verge. "We make two a day in the factory in Florida. So we can find ways to get a resilient solution."

Previously: SpaceX and OneWeb Clash Over Proposed Satellite Constellation Orbits
FCC Approves SpaceX Lowering Orbit of Internet Satellites
SpaceX Approved to Deploy 1 Million U.S. Starlink Terminals; OneWeb Reportedly Considers Bankruptcy
Russia Places Extraordinary Demands on OneWeb Prior to Satellite Launch


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 23 2022, @12:25AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday March 23 2022, @12:25AM (#1231323) Journal

    The IPID for all comments is automatically deleted after about 30 days.

    So on this story here: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=22/02/18/1819211 [soylentnews.org]

    All of the Feb 19 comments and some of the Feb 20 comments have no IPID at the moment I'm writing this, while the newer ones do.

    The IPIDs for moderations are stored forever as far as I can tell, since I found some all the way back on an August 2014 comment just now, and they are linked to the account that made the moderation.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @02:54AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @02:54AM (#1231342)

    That contradicts Janrinok's statement that some user and a suspected sock puppet were the only two accounts to use a specific IP since "the beginning of time." So someone is lying, and at best AC comment IPs are discarded after two weeks while registered users have their IPs logged forever.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:00AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:00AM (#1231351) Journal

      Nope, they are gone from all comments past that ~30 day limit, AC or not.

      It's the moderations. If two or more accounts spend mod points while using the same IPID, they will forever appear grouped together in a neat list when you click that IPID, along with the latest comments (newer than 30 days) made by that IPID. Unless they incidentally used the same VPN or Tor node, the accounts are probably related. Users upmodding their own posts looks really obvious.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]