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Eutelsat has revealed that they’ve purchased an additional 229 satellites for OneWeb’s constellation of ultrafast broadband spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), which is in addition to the 440 already procured from Airbus. A total of 669 new satellites have now been procured and they’ve also chosen Arianespace to help launch some of these in 2027 and 2028.
OneWeb, which readers may recall was originally rescued from bankruptcy by the UK government and Indian group Bharti Global, before later becoming a part of Eutelsat – with concessions (here), currently has 654 small (c.150kg) first generation (GEN1) LEO satellites in space – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km (c.600 of them for coverage and the rest for redundancy).
However, LEO satellites are only designed to stay in orbit around the Earth for c.5 years or more before being dragged back down to burn up in the atmosphere, which means that Eutelsat has long been planning to renew and enhance the OneWeb constellation (aka – “Eutelsat Next“).