OneWeb

The company was founded in 2012 under the name WorldVu,[9] based in Britain's Channel Islands.[12]

In 2015, OneWeb secured US$500 million in funding, and agreed to purchase certain future launch services, from existing aerospace industry companies Arianespace and Virgin Galactic.[13][14] In June 2015, OneWeb also entered into a deal with Airbus Defence and Space for the construction of its broadband Internet satellites after a competition among U.S. and European manufacturers.[15]

In July 2016, one year after the initial announcement, OneWeb stated they were on schedule.[16] In December 2016, OneWeb raised US$1 billion from SoftBank Group Corp. and US$200 million from existing investors.[17][18]

In February 2017, OneWeb announced that it expected to sell all of its capacity by launch time, yet the only announced capacity sold was for a joint Gogo and Intelsat venture. Wyler announced he was considering nearly quadrupling the size of the satellite constellation by adding 1972 additional satellites that it has priority rights to.[17] With the original capital raise of US$500 million in 2015, plus the US$1 billion investment of SoftBank in 2016, previous "investors committed to an additional US$200 million, bringing OneWeb's total capital raised to US$1.7 billion".[17] A merger arrangement with Intelsat that had been in negotiations during May 2017 collapsed in June and did not go forward.[19]

OneWeb satellite manufacturing facility in Merritt Island, Florida

By 2019, OneWeb had formed a joint venture — OneWeb Satellites — with the European company Airbus Defence and Space in order to manufacturer its satellites in higher volume and at lower cost than any satellites previously built by Airbus. A manufacturing facility was built in Merritt Island, Florida. Initial satellite production at the new facility began in mid-2019 and by January 2020, the factory reached the target production rate of two satellites per day.[20]

On 27 February 2019, OneWeb successfully launched its first six satellites into low Earth orbit from the Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guiana using a Soyuz-2 rocket.[21] The same day OneWeb announced that it signed its first two client agreements marking the beginning of its commercialization.[22] On 18 March 2019, OneWeb announced it had secured $1.25 billion in funding following a successful first launch. The funding was from existing investors SoftBank and Qualcomm, as well as Grupo Salinas and the Government of Rwanda.[23]

By August 2019, the company had 6 of its satellites broadcasting at the right frequencies for 90 days, meeting the "use-it-or-lose-it" spectrum conditions set by the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union.[24] This secured the vital rights OneWeb needed to operate its global satellite broadband network.[12]

In February and March 2020, the company launched an additional 68 satellites to orbit, stating that it would slow down for a minor design modification to be made before planning to launch again in May.[20]

In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 stock market crash, OneWeb faced a liquidity crisis and considered bankruptcy.[25] By the time of the bankruptcy filing, the company had reduced its workforce from 531 employees down to 74. The effect on the previously planned ten launches in 2020 was not publicly discussed.[26]

On March 27, 2020, OneWeb Global Limited and 18 affiliates all filed bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.[27][11] The company blamed the COVID-19 pandemic, but it needs to raise an additional several billion dollars of capital after development and early testing was always a part of the plan, and the high-cost structure of OneWeb's contracted launches and satellites relative to the market size and other emerging competition had been known for some time, and was thought to be challenging well prior to the emergence of the pandemic.[5] OneWeb Satellites, the joint venture between OneWeb and Airbus Defence to build the satellites, says it has made temporary furloughs due to the COVID-19 pandemic but that they are not due to the OneWeb bankruptcy filing.[28]

Model of a OneWeb satellite

In 2016, OneWeb planned for a launch cadence of 30-36 satellites a month[29] to create an initial constellation of 650 satellites. The satellites operate in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). OneWeb chose an altitude of 1200 km for its satellites because there is a minimum existing population of satellites and debris at that altitude.[30]

Like existing LEO based communications satellite constellations, OneWeb's satellites are closer to Earth and will, therefore, provide much lower transmission delays than geostationary satellite broadband services[24]. As late as January 2020, OneWeb was still planning to provide 10 times the bandwidth and one-tenth of the latency of existing geostationary satellites.[31]

OneWeb's factory in Exploration Park on Merritt Island, Florida opened in July 2019, just outside the gates of NASA's Kennedy Space Center.[32][33] The factory is a joint venture with Airbus and has a production capacity of two satellites a day.[34] The satellites will be programmed to detect the end of their life span after 5-7 years in orbit, and deorbit themselves from space and so that they burn up in the atmosphere as they descend towards Earth.[33]

In June 2019, OneWeb rolled out its initiative Responsible Space to outline the specific approaches it plans to take to promote sustainability and safe operations in space.[30] Responsible Space covers design and operational practices, including disposal of a satellite within 5 years of the end of its mission; developing an "ecosystem" within the space industry that supports sustainability; and collaboration with other space operators.[30] As one example, OneWeb plans to include a grapple fixture on its satellites so that a third-party satellite could grab it and tug it out of orbit, should the satellite prove non-responsive.[30]

• Official website