With Russian rockets off-limits, OneWeb hitches ride with rival SpaceX

Russia is becoming politically and economically isolated not just on Earth, but in space too.

After three years of partnership with Roscosmos, Russia’s state-run space corporation, British satellite-broadband provider OneWeb will now launch via SpaceX. The decision comes as a surprise, given that SpaceX-owned Starlink and OneWeb are direct competitors in the satellite-broadband space.

• Up until this point, all 428 of OneWeb’s satellites in orbit were launched on Russian Soyuz rockets, through a partnership brokered by French launch-service provider Arianespace.

The move comes after Roscosmos responded to a growing list of sanctions from European and North American nations by holding 36 of OneWeb’s satellites hostage earlier this month, refusing to launch them into space unless OneWeb agreed to a list of demands.

• Roscosmos head, Dmitry Rogozin, stated that it would only launch OneWeb’s satellites if the UK government divested its $500 million stake in OneWeb and promised that the satellites would not be used for military purposes.

OneWeb went to the competition instead, signing an agreement with SpaceX. Elon Musk tweeted that he now expects SpaceX to potentially launch around 70% of the world’s spacecraft this year, up from a previous goal of ~65%, prior to the war in Ukraine.

Compare and contrast: OneWeb aims to provide coverage to businesses and governments, whereas Starlink’s market is mostly individual consumers. Starlink says it has 250,000 subscribers across consumer and enterprise, while OneWeb is still launching its constellation. It expects to have all of its 648 satellites in orbit by year’s end—for comparison, Starlink has already launched 1,469 of its 4,408 authorized satellites.

Zoom out…Besides the tension surrounding OneWeb, there was concern that Russia would leave American astronaut Mark Vande Hei stranded aboard the ISS, but Russia has stated that he will be returned to Earth on March 30.