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TAMPA, Fla. — SpaceX launched 20 spare OneWeb satellites Oct. 20 to strengthen the resiliency of French operator Eutelsat’s rival low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband network.
Eutelsat said it had successfully contacted each satellite following lift-off on a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:13 a.m. Eastern from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Eutelsat spokesperson Katie Dowd said the company now has 654 satellites in orbit for the constellation, which already had enough in LEO to provide global coverage but has been held up by ground infrastructure delays.
Dowd said the operator remains on track to start global services in the spring.
The satellites are identical to the rest in OneWeb’s first-generation constellation, which Airbus U.S. Space & Defense mostly built at its mass production facility in Merritt Island, Florida.
Eutelsat, which also operates a fleet of 36 geostationary satellites, has not said when it plans to introduce LEO spacecraft with improved technology after opting for a phased next-generation constellation deployment strategy.
According to Dowd, the company expects to start de-orbiting Gen 1 OneWeb satellites in the next couple of years as its first batch of LEO spacecraft near the end of their design lives.
“We have the option to prolong the life of Gen 1 to assume customer continuity as we examine options for Next Gen,” she said via email.
The Falcon 9’s first-stage booster successfully landed at Vandenberg less than eight minutes after lift-off, marking the 357th time SpaceX has recovered an orbital-class to date.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has launched more than 7,000 broadband satellites for its Starlink LEO network and recently recorded four million subscribers for the service.
Eutelsat and other legacy geostationary operators aim to leverage the flexibility and resiliency of a multi-orbit network to compete with Starlink for enterprise and government customers.