UK satellite company OneWeb suspends Baikonur launches

UK Government-backed OneWeb suspends satellite launch at Russian-run spaceport after Moscow demanded guarantee the spacecraft wouldn’t be used for military purposes

  • OneWeb has announced it is suspending launches from a Russian-run spaceport
  • 36 satellites were due to be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
  • Moscow wanted a guarantee spacecraft would not be used for military purposes
  • Britain also rejected a demand by Russia to sell its share in the satellite company 

British satellite company OneWeb has announced that it is suspending all launches from the Russian-run Baikonur spaceport. 

The firm, which is part-owned by the UK government, had hoped to send up 36 spacecraft on a Soyuz rocket but a row broke out amid the fall-out over Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and the UK were in a stand-off over the launch after Moscow’s space agency Roscosmos demanded guarantees the technology would not be used for military purposes.

Britain had separately come under pressure to scrap the launch because of the war in Ukraine, while Russia also wanted the UK government to divest itself of OneWeb shares, an ultimatum that was swiftly rejected by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng.

The British government said it supported OneWeb’s decision to suspend launches.

The OneWeb launch was due to use Russian Soyuz rockets at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (pictured)

‘In light of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, we are reviewing our participation in all further projects involving Russian collaboration,’ a spokesperson said.

Yesterday a Soyuz rocket carrying 36 OneWeb satellites was lifted onto a launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which Russia rents from Kazakhstan.

But Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin said the space agency wanted OneWeb to provide guarantees that its satellites would not going to be used against Russia.

Without these, Rogozin said Russia would cancel Friday’s planned launch without compensating OneWeb.

The UK satellite firm, which will offer broadband via a constellation of 650 satellites, was rescued from bankruptcy by Britain and Bharti Global in 2020. Eutelsat and SoftBank have also invested.

OneWeb announced that its board had voted to suspend future launches from Baikonur

The board of OneWeb, which is headquartered in London, voted this morning to suspend all future launches from Baikonur. 

It had been planning a series of flights from the cosmodrome this year to complete its broadband internet constellation.

The company now plans to work with its French partner Arianespace, which organises Soyuz launches around the world, to find alternative rocket rides.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX, has donated Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine, where internet connections have been disrupted due to the Russian invasion.

Starlink, like OneWeb, uses small low earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide internet access.

HAVE SATELLITES EVER COLLIDED IN SPACE?

In the decades since humanity first launched satellites to orbit, there have only been four known collisions between two such objects in space.

But, experts say satellite crashes will become more common in the future.  

The first occured in 1991, when Russia’s Cosmos 1934 was hit by a piece of Cosmos 926, according to ESA.

Five years later, France’s Cerise satellite was struck by a piece of an Ariane 4 rocket.

Then, in 2005, US upper stage was hit by a piece of a Chinese rocket’s third stage. In 2009 an Iridium satellite slammed into Russia’s Cosmos-2251.

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