BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – As geopolitical relations continue to be mired by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the space agency in the country is now threatening to prevent the launch of a batch of communication satellites for OneWeb unless demands are met by the United Kingdom.
As recently as about 9 a.m. MSK in Russia, Roscosmos stated that it was progressing toward the launch of 36 OneWeb satellites on March 5 aboard a Soyuz-2.1b rocket.
Hours later in a video statement, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said that in order for the launch to proceed, they need a guarantee that the satellites won’t be used for military purposes no later than 10:30 p.m. Moscow time.
The agency also demanded that the U.K. divest its stake in OneWeb. Roscosmos cited “the UK’s hostile stance towards Russia” as the reason for this component of the ultimatum.
That prompted a response from Kwasi Kwarteng, the U.K. Business and Energy Secretary who said in a tweet, “There’s no negotiation on OneWeb: the UK Government is not selling its share. We are in touch with other shareholders to discuss next steps..."
Rogozin responded, also on Twitter, minutes later and said, per Google Translate:
“UK GOVERNMENT NOT SELLING ITS SHARE IN ONEWEB, CONTACTS OTHER SHAREHOLDERS TO DISCUSS STEPS - BUSINESS MINISTER OK. I give you two days to think. There will be no guarantees of non-military use of the system - there will be no system.”
Global impacts
Unlike SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which operates in a vertically integrated system, being manufactured and launched by the same company, satellites for the OneWeb constellation are a multinational collaboration.
OneWeb was founded in 2012 and has facilities in both the U.K. and the United States.
Following its move into bankruptcy in 2020, the U.K. government and India-based Bharti Global made a successful bid to acquire the company. Bharti holds the controlling 38.6% of the company. The U.K. government, Eutelsat (French satellite operator) and Softbank (Japanese multinational conglomerate) each own 19.3%
The satellites themselves are manufactured at Airbus OneWeb Satellites on Merritt Island. The Brevard County facility is a joint venture between Germany-based Airbus and OneWeb and employs around 200 people.
It’s CEO James Hinds told Spectrum News in a Feb. 16 interview that their goal is to complete production on two satellites each day, with OneWeb being their primary customer.
“A lot of people talk about ‘new space.’ We actually think what we’re doing here is ‘next space,’” Hinds said. “It’s looking at how you can take a product, which has been around for 50 years, but you can actually make it almost a commodity as opposed to a bespoke product.”
Airbus OneWeb Satellites also has a facility in France, which employs 107 people.
Satellite production on the Space Coast
During a tour of the Airbus OneWeb Satellites facility on Merritt Island, Hinds said they draw inspiration from the efficiency and production flow of the Ford Model T. The flow of the assembly process is constructed in a U-shaped system with spaces for two satellites to be worked on at any given station.
“We had to address the question of the market, where people want satellites to be off the shelf. So, if you have a particular mission requirement, be it observation, be it in communication, whatever, we have the capability now where we can take the spacecraft design, which is proven, and we can put a mission on board near enough at the drop of a hat, as we would say in England,” Hinds said.
So far, 428 of the planned 648 have successfully launched to orbit through 13 launches onboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. March 5 was set to be the 14th out of 19 planned launches. In the employee lounge area of Airbus OneWeb Satellites, there is a wall of satellite stickers and darker shaded mockups, giving a visual rendering of how much satellites they have left to build for OneWeb to launch.
Hinds said it’s a great feeling whenever they can place more decals on the constellation wall.
“It is absolutely gratifying and what we try to do, is we try to make sure that every member of our team actually has a chance to place a decal,” Hinds said. “They are part of the story by working on the floor or working in their office, but they’re also a part of the story by taking a decal and putting it on the wall. It’s one whole family working together.”
On the factory floor itself, workers use a series of so-called “smart tools” that are programmed to know where they are within the factory, where they will be used next and how they need to interact with a piece of hardware.
Hinds said this system can reduce the amount of time certain tasks take by up to 90 percent.
“If you just scale up every single time you have to do a 30-minute activity, it now takes four minutes,” Hinds said. “It’s a tremendous impact on the speed at which we can produce. And we need that to produce two spacecraft a day.”
Near the entrance to the factory floor is an area dubbed “the hospital,” where spacecraft experiencing any issues anywhere along the production line can be pulled off and another plugged into the flow of assembly.
The production process includes pulling together the avionics, propulsion system and payload capacity for these satellites. A pair of silver, circular antenna are prominently featured on one end of the spacecraft.
Hinds said because the satellites are manufactured in Florida, around the factory they’ve been nicknamed “Mickey Mouse ears.”
As satellites round the U-shape of production, they start to go through a series of performance tests to make sure everything is working properly.
Hinds said one of the final steps in their manufacturing is to check the alignment of various items on the spacecraft against a master reference. He said for some companies, that process could take a week or longer, but their system only takes an hour and a half.
“From the point of going from the stockroom to delivery is around about 10 days, just to give you an idea of how fast we’ve made the spacecraft production happen,” Hinds said.”
What comes next?
Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hinds noted that while OneWeb is their primary customer, they have plans beyond that constellation and will build satellites for other customers.
OneWeb contracts with Arianespace for its launches aboard Soyuz rockets. But that variety of customers could expand the number of launch providers for their spacecraft.
“It’s perfectly feasible that as we work with other contracts, they will use other launch vehicles and I image that they’re going to be some which will be here in Florida,” Hinds said
As for the remaining satellites to be launched, it’s unclear what will become of the 36 currently on board the Soyuz sitting at the launchpad in Kazakhstan.
Even if OneWeb were to shift away from using the Soyuz as the launch vehicle, there aren’t many viable options that could take its payloads to space at the rate of about 34 to 36 satellites at a time.
According to Arianespace, the total payload of the 36 satellites from the February 10 launch was about 5,495 kg.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is the most capable rocket currently with a payload capacity of 22,800 kg to low Earth orbit or 8,300 kg to geostationary transfer orbit. However, with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation a direct competitor of OneWeb, they may not be inclined to provide that ride to space.
ULA’s Atlas V rocket also has the capability to send that payload to orbit, but the remaining 25 Atlas V rockets have all be secured by missions for NASA, Space Force and Amazon’s Kuiper internet satellite constellation. The company’s remaining two Delta rockets are also spoken for with launches for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.
The next generation rocket for ULA, the Vulcan Centaur, is still in development.
The Ariane 5, the heavy lift launch vehicle in the Arianespace suite, is similarly approaching its retirement with the final rocket spot going to the Indian Space Research Organization last year, according to an interview with NASAspaceflight.com.
Japan has its H-IIA rocket, but it only launched twice in 2021, including the Inmarsat-6 F1 mission for British satellite company Inmarsat.
Another option could be Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is mainly used to support its Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. It’s powered by a Russian-made RD-181 engine.