OneWeb Emerges From Bankruptcy, Plans Global Satellite Broadband By 2022 (arstechnica.com) 80
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: OneWeb has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy under new ownership and says it will begin launching more broadband satellites next month. Similar to SpaceX Starlink, OneWeb is building a network of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that can provide high-speed broadband with much lower latencies than traditional geostationary satellites. After a launch in December, "launches will continue throughout 2021 and 2022 and OneWeb is now on track to begin commercial connectivity services to the UK and the Arctic region in late 2021 and will expand to delivering global services in 2022," OneWeb said in an announcement Friday.
In March this year, OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and reportedly laid off most of its staff. In July, OneWeb agreed to sell the business to a consortium including the UK government and Bharti Global Limited for $1 billion. In the Friday announcement, OneWeb said it has secured "all relevant regulatory approvals" needed to exit bankruptcy. "Together with our UK Government partner, we recognized that OneWeb has valuable global spectrum with priority rights, and we benefit from $3.3 billion invested to date and from the satellites already in orbit, securing our usage rights," Bharti founder and Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said.
In March this year, OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and reportedly laid off most of its staff. In July, OneWeb agreed to sell the business to a consortium including the UK government and Bharti Global Limited for $1 billion. In the Friday announcement, OneWeb said it has secured "all relevant regulatory approvals" needed to exit bankruptcy. "Together with our UK Government partner, we recognized that OneWeb has valuable global spectrum with priority rights, and we benefit from $3.3 billion invested to date and from the satellites already in orbit, securing our usage rights," Bharti founder and Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said.
RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:3)
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Bah, there is plenty of space. Pun so intended it is not even funny.
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Re: RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:2)
Re: RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:2)
Perhaps it is radio astronomy that will suffer most?
The culmination of irony would be that we miss ET transmission because of shielding ourselves with communication satellites. So, for forever inundating ourselves with ourselves.
Maybe Amazon is next after OneWeb. Others too, when transportation becomes more accessible. Starlink is a demo/POC for the competitors. If they can make it others can too.
Re: RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:5, Interesting)
Rapidly decreasing launch costs are going to increasingly move astronomy (both optical and radio) into space. The capabilities will be greatly expanding over time, not decreasing.
I welcome OneWeb from a "some competition to Starlink would be great" perspective, since old-school satellite internet is now a hilarious joke in comparison, with ~1% the bandwidth and ~40x the ping time. At the same time, I'm dubious. How do you beat a company who owns their own rockets, and said rockets happen to be the cheapest per kg, and they're rapidly en route to much cheaper rockets, and they're significantly ahead on their system, and they have a track record of iterating faster?
OneWeb is only alive because of a UK government bailout, so I guess it can suckle on that teat for a while yet. And maybe it'll simply be the case that there's so much market growth potential for now that even inefficient late comers can still make a mint.
Re: RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:5, Interesting)
Just for fun, I checked out the list of the largest optical reflecting telescopes [wikipedia.org] - and there's not a single one that contains a mirror segment that wouldn't fit in Starship's payload bay. The biggest is 8,4m, but Starship has a ~9m OD, so probably a max payload diameter of about ~8,5m. Indeed, the article for the Thirty Meter Telescope [wikipedia.org] states that "The technology to build a mirror larger than 8.4 meters does not exist". Indeed, the Subaru Telescope - until 2004 the largest in the world - has only a single 8,2m mirror (larger telescopes since then generally use segmented mirrors).
Radio telescopes can of course be much bigger, but they also have much lower precision requirements. Either way, being able to get away from the Earth and its radio noise (both natural and artificial) would be a huge advantage regardless.
One of the most exciting potential aspects to me is the potential for very long baseline space-based interferometry, to resolve small, distant objects in detail. Imagine, say, visually resolving countless Earthlike planets around distant stars and getting the spectral signatures of each of their atmospheres, looking for oxygen or other anomalous data.
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It is very difficult to transport a mirror this large - the G forces involved in a launch will probably crack it.
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Just for fun, I checked out the list of the largest optical reflecting telescopes [wikipedia.org] - and there's not a single one that contains a mirror segment that wouldn't fit in Starship's payload bay.
Let's get our stainless steel tub into orbit and back before we book flights on it though.
It's amazing that so many people are willing to sacrifice earthly optical and radio astronomy and create orbital junk for this.
As food for thought, if we have our first Space Force war in orbit, it will likely take out both Spacelink et al, and make it a long time before we can do the now relegated to space science.
Re: RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing that so many people are willing to sacrifice earthly optical and radio astronomy and create orbital junk for this.
No, it is not. Earth-based astronomy has always had to deal with problems that have been dismissed as "one day we will have telescopes in space and these won't be problems any more". Not having radio telescopes on Earth means not trying to create radio free zones. Not having visible light telescopes on Earth means not having to compensate for atmospheric distortion.
What's amazing to me is that so many people are willing to accept the problems inherent to having to do astronomy from the surface of a planet with a soupy atmosphere.
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Yes, imagine using a crater on the far side of the moon. I can scan the sky with no interference from Earth, no gases to absorb some wavelengths, no interfering from local construction. The results would be fantastic.
Sure - although there are some details. How ya going to deal with the lunar dust getting into the liquid reflective medium. Ho ya gonna keep the rotational velocity extremely consistent, and vibration at near zero - liqud scope turntables have a track record of vibrations causing ripples on the surface. Now design and implement it. Give us a by date and estimated costs.
I'd never say it isn't possible. I will say it will be an incredible engineering feat, and likely the most expensive undertaking in huma
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It's amazing that so many people are willing to sacrifice earthly optical and radio astronomy and create orbital junk for this.
No, it is not.
I don't know how much astronomy you do, but if these devices proliferate, and we allow it - yeah - we have made that decision.
Earth-based astronomy has always had to deal with problems that have been dismissed as "one day we will have telescopes in space and these won't be problems any more". Not having radio telescopes on Earth means not trying to create radio free zones. Not having visible light telescopes on Earth means not having to compensate for atmospheric distortion.
Let us go back to the Hubble Telescope. The costs to design and orbit it were very impressive. And then there was the cost and effort to orbit and install the aberration correction lenses. Then there was the cost to orbit the servicing missions. Then we abandoned it when NASA had a change in leadership, only to be taken up again. Now we re just waiting for it to die, because we can'
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Rapidly decreasing launch costs won't help amateurs who still won't be able to afford to put up their own space telescope, or rent time on someone else's.
Astronomy has got vastly cheaper over the last couple of decades, with cheap hardware and some clever software making it possible to get some great results and making some interesting discoveries on pocket money budgets.
OneWeb is just more money spaffed up the wall by the Tory government, desperate to try to save the economy from the disaster they have cre
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It's a fact. Cummings' plan was to mitigate the damage he did by turning the UK into some kind of tech hub. Pissing away money on OneWeb was part of that plan.
It was never going to work and now he's gone presumably most of it will get dropped, like the Northern Powerhouse was when Osborne left.
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Sort of. Pissing away money on OneWeb was part of the plan to replace the lost access to the Galileo satellites with it, making their own satnav with blackjack and hookers. After they realised that the OneWeb satellites are not the right kind for that, they dropped the project.
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The question is does anyone want one?
We already have GPS, Glonass, Baidu and Galileo. Centimetre accuracy is possible with a bit of effort. Coverage is excellent even in urban canyons.
Is there any business case for another one?
Those 4 have been justified because they don't trust each other and want a system for military use too. Seems like a waste of money for the UK to develop its own though, unless we are planning for a potential military conflict with the EU.
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Is there any business case for another one?
Perhaps? A LEO system could offer stronger signals, faster fixes, and perhaps even better accuracy and lesser clock requirements.
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But it would need a metric fuckton of satellites with atomic clocks on them.
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The planet where you can buy a mid range telescope, hook it up to your computer and do interesting science with it for less than the cost of renting time on a space based one.
Re: RIP in peace, astronomy (Score:2)
True, I should have used the term earth-based.
Still, it will take a very long time before there are telescopes on the far side of the Moon or larger than Earth instruments at some Lagrange point.
SpaceX is the forerunner, but there will be competition too, if their business model proves itself.
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You have zero concept of just how much astronomy is done from the ground and the cost differences between an earth based telescope and a space based telescope.
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Source: literally any Starship presentation.
Incremental cost per launch as per the design is about $1M, for initially ~100T to LEO ($10/kg), potentially up to 150T eventually (~$7/kg), vs. an industry standard of several thousand dollars per kg. Now, you need to factor in amortized capital costs atop that, which is where flight rate comes into the picture. But with such a tiny marginal cost, and SpaceX's history of making launch business for itself, I have no doubts at all that they'll eventually create a
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It is conceivable to build a camera that receives timing/position data from GPS, and directional data from its electronic mount (or possibly from the starfield itself) to disregard the relevant pixels when appropriate, while collecting image data using some sort of automatic frame stacking technique
My Grandma does it that way.
We used to do something similar with some of the iridium satellites. It was fun to see them show up just as predicted.
But to turn off cameras while the cavalcade of satellites passes overhead is going to take some impressive effort. Given the plans for thousands of them, it might start taking a long time to get images.
It's like someone using your backyard for a shooting range, and when you complain, they tell you to wear earmuffs and don't look out the window when they a
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But to turn off cameras while the cavalcade of satellites passes overhead is going to take some impressive effort. Given the plans for thousands of them, it might start taking a long time to get images.
You just implied that wasn't necessary because you said your grandma does astronomy in a way that ignores satellites. Make up your mind.
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But to turn off cameras while the cavalcade of satellites passes overhead is going to take some impressive effort. Given the plans for thousands of them, it might start taking a long time to get images.
You just implied that wasn't necessary because you said your grandma does astronomy in a way that ignores satellites. Make up your mind.
Sigh, Looks like sarcasm has become a lost art, amirite?
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You do not have to turn off the camera, just the predicted pixels that will be affected.
If you are at that level of precision for desensitizing pixels then reactivating them as the multiple satellites traverse the FOV, you are looking at exceptionally precise tracking. Amateur Astronomers? Probably way too salty for that
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Don't be an idiot. Even 100,000 satellites is not enough for that .. at most you will have about 10 to 20 low earth orbit satellites overhead at a given time .. none of which will be invisible outside of twilight and dawn (satellites have to reflect sunlight to be visible) and they will all be realtime trackable (so you can turn your astrophotography camera off while it crosses path .. if one even does).
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Plus, most people doing amateur astrophotography use stacking, and streaks can be removed in stacking.
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Removing streaks via stacking is only useful for stationary objects. Many of the interesting things are moving, which is what makes them interesting.
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Rest in peace in peace? :P
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Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department, thank you very much...
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Too small. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes... [knowyourmeme.com] is the closest can find. :P
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20 years from now Earth orbit will be wall-to-wall satellites at this rate. :-(
It is going to get a little messy, isn't it? Already Starlink is destroying the night sky. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/V... [upi.com]
https://skyandtelescope.org/as... [skyandtelescope.org] But hey - BillyBob's ability to download his shemale midget scat porn has to take precedence over silly things like science, amirite?
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BillyBob's ability to download his shemale midget scat porn has to take precedence over silly things like science, amirite?
In short, yes. Access to information is a hallmark of technology. Move the astronomical equipment into space.
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It's 2020, most of us have moved past words like "shemale" and "midget".
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It's 2020, most of us have moved past words like "shemale" and "midget".
Clearly we have not since they apparently offend you and you just had to express that fact.
Yes, the possibility that you meant the pornography preferences of people have become more nuanced did briefly cross my mind, but then I remembered who you are.
It is amazing is it not? I did use the reference to my naughty words to specifically shock (and perhaps entertain) some folks with the decision that pornography, which accounts for a huge part of internet traffic, is by default considered a good tradeoff for destruction of ground based astronomy.
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It's 2020, most of us have moved past words like "shemale" and "midget".
But we have lost any concept that some people might write such things for their shock value.
Sine you apparently are serious, allow me to explain and hope I can lesson your tiggerdom.
The concept that sopmeone's individual need to web surf being a much more important thing than astrophysics and astronomy is if I may be so blunt, REally really really, solipsistic, and shows that the person is so narrwly focussed that their immediate needs to do whatever they want to do is paramount.
So here's where the e
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Shock value just makes it worse.
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Shock value just makes it worse.
Especially for the humour impaired. Be offended if it brings a joy to your life.
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shemale midget scat porn
Gee thanks Ol, I'll spend the rest of the day getting that image out of my head. :p :p :p
..but, yes. Also, I wonder how much junk you can have floating around up there before it becomes a navigation hazard.
On the other hand some commentors are right, space-based telescopes appear to be superior in many cases due to not having to deal with atmospheric conditions, but there's getting them up there in the first place (to a Lagrange point; am I right?) which is costly and time-consuming.
Maybe if one day we
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..but, yes. Also, I wonder how much junk you can have floating around up there before it becomes a navigation hazard.
With the numbers they are floating, It's going to get pretty crowded. The little sats are going to make a pretty good approximation of Space garbage. Plus I would assume that global coverage is going to manage to turn an fair orbital shell area of space into a KTFO! space. Plus finally, the numbers they speak of make a Kessler event more likely.
On the other hand some commentors are right, space-based telescopes appear to be superior in many cases due to not having to deal with atmospheric conditions, but there's getting them up there in the first place (to a Lagrange point; am I right?) which is costly and time-consuming.
Absolutely correct. A really big scope at an L-Point would be wonderful. Some friends and I did some BOE calculations on several mile diameter scopes made of mylar
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Oneweb is top of the deadpool (Score:3)
The UK's disastrously useless government getting involved is the cherry on the coffin.
Space Debris (Score:5, Interesting)
From a risk perspective, I haven't seen any analysis from astronomers indicating whether this would be an issue, which surprises me. Also, leaving them up (practically forever) in a graveyard orbit would seem to make them vulnerable to secondary collisions that could cause problems, no?
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It helps that OneWeb's plan involves orders of magnitude fewer satellites than Starlink.
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But it also involves infinitely more satellites moved to parking orbits, since SpaceX's plan is to keep them all in LEO and deorbit them when done with them, or allow them to deorbit if they lose contact with them. So it really doesn't help the issue we're talking about.
Re:Space Debris (Score:5, Insightful)
Their FCC filing says they plan to de-orbit at end of life: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp... [arstechnica.net]
A bigger worry is that one of these companies puts up tens of thousands of satellites and then goes bankrupt (again). OneWeb estimates 3.3 collision avoidance manoeuvres per year, if they aren't around to perform them...
We urgently need some new laws governing this, including contingency funds that must be set aside to either maintain or de-orbit bankrupt satellites.
Well... (Score:2)
SpaceX has already almost 1000 satellites running, Beta-test in progress, they send up 60 Satellites every other week since the beginning of the year, so I somewhat doubt that investors will queue to throw their money at a bankrupt firm that just exists because Boris Johnson bought a bit of stock a couple of days ago because he was bored in quarantine.
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Boris Johnson bought OneWeb because he got kicked out of Galileo. Now OneWeb says that they maybe will be able to add positioning to their satellites if only someone will give them $1.2 billion. Anyone knows if this is actually possible?
Oneweb positioning system practicality (Score:3)
It seems very impractical to me.
Current satellite positioning systems require three satellites in view in the sky. In theory, it can be done with two if the receiver on the ground has a source of timing with the stability of an atomic clock.
The current 31 operational GPS satellites are at an altitude of 20000Km
The Oneweb satellites are at an altitude of 1200Km. They are in view above the horizon from a much much smaller area of the earths surface.
If they want enough satellites for it to work to be in view m
All about Galileo (Score:2)
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Shitty brexit ... in SPACE !
Iridium biz model (Score:2)
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It has been reported that the UK government panicked when they realised leaving the EU meant no access to Galileo (because the UK _insisted_ that Galileo should not be made available to anyone outside the EU)
Wat?
The EU has successfully petitioned the FCC to permit Americans to use Galileo [europa.eu], as if we actually needed their permission to receive a radio signal. So the idea that Galileo is not available outside the EU is laughable.
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So the USA has access to Galileo's encrypted signals? No, you don't need permission to receive an encrypted radio signal. It just doesn't help.
O RLY?
Even if their encryption were worth a fuck, you'd still only need to buy a receiver, because that's where the decryption happens. And it doesn't refuse to work if you take it to another country, that would defeat the whole purpose of a global positioning device.
Launch provider? (Score:1)