36 new spacecraft from OneWeb, owned by the UK government and the Bharti Global group of companies, arrived at Ignatievo airport (Blagoveshchensk) on an An-124-100 aircraft on Friday, February 26, 2021. Specialists of the Vostochny Space Center (a branch of the Center for Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure Facilities, part of the Roscosmos State Corporation) delivered all 36 spacecraft to the cosmodrome. Tomorrow, February 27, they will begin preparations for the launch planned for March using the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage.
Glavkosmos (a subsidiary of the Roscosmos State Corporation) provides for the launch of OneWeb satellites using Soyuz-2 launch vehicles under contracts with the European launch services provider Arianespace and the Russian-French company Starsem in close cooperation with other enterprises of the Roscosmos State Corporation – the Progress Rocket and Space Center, the S.А. Lavochkin and TsENKI.
To date, the constellation of OneWeb satellites in low Earth orbit numbers 110 spacecraft, and hundreds of others are planned to be launched. The upcoming launch should bring the number of OneWeb spacecraft in orbit to 146. Low-orbit OneWeb spacecraft are designed to provide terrestrial consumers with high-speed Internet directly via satellite communications.