Russia holds OneWeb rocket launch hostage, issues conditional demands
In its latest response to international sanctions and growing geopolitical tensions, Russia’s state space corporation, Roscosmos, is making a list of demands of its customer OneWeb before it agrees to launch the company’s upcoming mission this week. OneWeb’s satellites were scheduled to take off on top of a Russian Soyuz rocket on March 5th in Kazakhstan, but in light of these new demands, it seems likely that launch will not take place.
In a video posted to Twitter, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, outlined in an interview that he wants assurances from OneWeb that the company’s satellites will not be used for military purposes. Roscosmos also demanded that the British government, which is a primary shareholder in OneWeb, divest its stake in the company. If these demands aren’t met, Roscosmos says it will roll back the Soyuz rocket, and the launch won’t take place as planned.
OneWeb has been launching its satellites exclusively on Russia’s Soyuz rocket for the last few years, either from French Guiana or Kazakhstan. OneWeb is building out a massive mega-constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to provide internet coverage from space, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink system. The company has been launching its satellites in batches of 34 and 36 at a time. This week’s launch was supposed to carry 36 new satellites to orbit to flesh out the constellation.
OneWeb has yet to provide a response to the demands, and the company did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge in time for publication.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/russia-holds-oneweb-rocket-launch-hostage-issues-conditional-demands/ar-AAUwcVS
Yeah we're going to let you guys launch out military satellites. Get over yourself dumbass.