Russia’s Space Isolation Grows as OneWeb Cancels Launch


OneWeb, a partially British government-owned satellite internet company, has canceled an upcoming satellite launch using a Russian rocket and suspended all future launches based in Russia, the company said on Thursday, emerging from a tense public stalemate with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. later announced.

Also on Thursday, Roscosmos announced that it would stop selling rocket engines to American companies.

Both moves from Moscow occupation of Ukrainecontinues to further isolate the Russian space agency from its Western space partners and significantly limit Russia’s private space activities. OneWeb’s loss of a reliable supplier of rockets for launch also poses new challenges for the company as it aims to complete its constellation of 648 satellites in orbit this year.

OneWeb was saved from bankruptcy in 2020 by the British government and other investors. It was planned to launch 36 satellites on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Friday. The company has sent nearly 400 satellites into orbit since 2019, each time using the Soyuz, a horsepower rocket that has been active since the days of the Cold War space race.

But on Wednesday, just after the Soyuz took to the field just before its launch, Russia’s space chief Dmitry Rogozin announced two conditions aimed at countering the sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine: unless the UK withdraws its multibillion-dollar stake in OneWeb and the company satellite mission unless it provides “guarantee that its satellites will not be used for military purposes”.

Mr Rogozin also He posted a video on Twitter It shows Roscosmos personnel on a platform next to the rocket, covering the British, American, and Japanese flags engraved on the outer surface of the rocket. “The launchers in Baikonur decided that our rocket would look better without the flags of some countries,” said former Deputy Prime Minister Mr. Rogozin, who often makes exaggerated statements on social media.

ultimatum from the space agency Just three days before the previously scheduled launch, Wednesday night sparked emergency discussions between British officials and OneWeb shareholders, who decided to halt all future launches from the spaceport Baikonur in Kazakhstan, where Russia has carried out most of its launches. Mr Rogozin suggested on Twitter that OneWeb’s decision would plunge the company into another bankruptcy case.

Chris McLaughlin, OneWeb’s chief of government affairs, dismissed the warning.

“This is an incredibly well-funded company with no debt, backed by strong international shareholders who make the decision themselves,” he said in an interview.

The UK does not have the ability to launch large payloads into orbit. Mr McLaughlin said OneWeb will be looking at alternative launch providers in Japan, India and the United States.

“We’re always keeping an eye on the launcher environment, but this is something completely new and unprecedented,” said Mr McLaughlin.

The company was saved from bankruptcy in 2020 by India’s Bharti Enterprises, OneWeb’s largest shareholder, and the UK, whose $500 million public investment in the satellite operator was aimed at boosting the UK’s space economy. With no rockets to launch, OneWeb’s goal of completing the mega-constellation faces serious cutbacks. It competes with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation to beam broadband internet to remote areas around the world.

OneWeb has faced pressure from British politicians to pursue energy companies to sever Russian business ties. The company had paid for Russian launches in bulk through French rocket company Arianespace, and there were six more missions remaining under contract—a series of launches likely worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the coming days, OneWeb will begin negotiations with Arianespace to determine how, if possible, to get the money back for suspended Soyuz missions, according to a OneWeb official who spoke on anonymity to discuss sensitive business conversations for which he was not authorized. reveal. He added to OneWeb executives that it was unclear when or how the 36 satellites currently in Russia for the canceled mission Friday will launch from the rocket, or where these satellites will be stored as OneWeb searches for a different launch provider.

“There’s no quick fix to this problem,” said Caleb Henry, satellite industry analyst at Quilty Analytics. “They have the money to come up with new launches, just the big hassle of doing it.”

Mr. Henry added that launch contracts of this size are usually signed two years in advance.

“OneWeb expected to finish constellations by August, so with a new launch provider that won’t be possible,” he said.

Russia’s space agency’s move to disrupt one of its biggest commercial clients was perhaps the most powerful example yet of how the war in Ukraine has spilled over into space, an area where the country has for decades found cooperation with countries that were once its homeland. Cold War enemies.

Last week, Roscosmos withdrew more than 80 Russian personnel from French Guiana, where the European Space Agency has its sole launch site and flies commercial Soyuz missions. Then ESA said a joint robotic mission to Mars by the agency and Russia is expected to begin later this year. now “very unlikely” to advance on time. And Roscosmos on Thursday said it would stop cooperating with Germany on joint space station research projects.

Victoria Samson, a space policy analyst at the Secure World Foundation, said that with the barrage of Western sanctions over the invasion, the isolation of Roscosmos from its Western partners seemed inevitable.

“It’s not encouraging that Russia’s space agency is self-isolating,” he said. “Perhaps it is Russia that hastened the demise of connections that may have already come true in time. But now it is done on their terms.”

NASA, which manages the International Space Station with Roscosmos, said it plans to continue cooperation with its Russian counterparts. The two partners were negotiating a deal to launch Russian astronauts aboard the Crew Dragon, a SpaceX vehicle carrying NASA astronauts.

Beyond cooperating with NASA, Russia said Thursday it would stop selling rocket engines to American companies.

“In such a situation we cannot supply the United States with the world’s best rocket engines,” Mr. Rogozin told Russian state television. “Let them fly with something else, their broomstick, I don’t know what.”

The freeze could most severely affect Northrop Grumman, which uses Russian-made engines for the Antares launch vehicle that carries cargo to the space station for NASA. SpaceX provides this service to the space station, as well as the spacecraft launched by Japan and Russia.

In a more symbolic move, Mr. Rogozin said that Russia will no longer provide assistance in the use of a different Russian engine already purchased and in use by the United Launch Alliance for one of the most frequently used American rockets, the Atlas 5.

ULA’s CEO, Tory Bruno, downplayed the impact of the loss of technical assistance from Russia, saying, “We can do without it if necessary.”





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