SpaceX early Sunday morning sent a batch of 20 V1 Internet satellites from the British telecommunications company Eutelsat OneWeb into space, Space reported. They were delivered to low Earth orbit by a Falcon 9 rocket, which was launched at 7:13 Moscow time (1:13 EDT) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Image source: Space
About eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage landed as planned at Vandenberg Air Force Base’s Landing Zone 4. This was its seventh successful launch. In turn, the upper stage deployed satellites in a given orbit within 20 minutes, starting 59 minutes after launch.
Previously, SpaceX sent three batches of Eutelsat OneWeb satellites, each containing 40 units, into space. Eutelsat OneWeb entered into an agreement with it in March 2022 after the termination of cooperation with Roscosmos.
The previous time SpaceX launched Eutelsat OneWeb satellites was on May 20, 2023, after which the British company’s satellite constellation reached 634 spacecraft. At the time, Eutelsat OneWeb said the new batch of 16 satellites would be enough for it to begin providing its services around the world.
«OneWeb is on track to provide global coverage this year and is already in the process of scaling services to customers around the world,” OneWeb, which changed its name to Eutelsat OneWeb after merging with Eutelsat in September 2023, said at the time.