WASHINGTON : OneWeb, nearing completion of its internet-from-space network, has largely given up on trying to retrieve satellites worth $50 million in a dispute related to the Ukraine conflict, the satellite operator's chief executive said this week.
The British government-backed company in March last year canceled a planned launch of 36 broadband satellites aboard Russia's Soyuz rocket after Russia's space chief halted the mission in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. OneWeb refused and canceled all its future Soyuz launches. But it has been unable to retrieve the satellites from their Soyuz launchsite at the Russia-owned Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellites are worth a combined $50 million, OneWeb chief executive Neil Masterson said Tuesday.
The dispute was a temporary setback to OneWeb's plan to create an initial constellation of 588 satellites to provide global broadband coverage, forcing the company to quickly secure new rocket agreements with the Indian Space Research Organisation and SpaceX.