Roscomos and Arianespace Launch OneWeb 13

Credit: Arianespace

On Thursday, February 10 at 1:09 pm ET (18:09 UTC), Arianespace and Roscosmos launched the OneWeb 13 mission with 34 OneWeb satellites atop a Soyuz ST-B/Fregat-M rocket from the ELS at the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana. OneWeb is a satellite internet service owned by the British government and built by Airbus Defense and Space. Airbus contracted this launch via Starsem, the company in charge of commercial launches of Soyuz. The initial constellation is planned to have 648 satellites launched by 20 Soyuz rockets from three different countries (French Guiana, Russia, and Kazakhstan), but can be expanded up to 900 depending on demand. Customer demonstrations are planned to start this year with full 24-hour service starting late this year or next year. This batch will be put in a polar low earth orbit. This wase the 12th orbital launch attempt of 2022, 290th Arianespace launch, and the 72nd Soyuz 2.1b launch.