Satellites for the World of Internet access will make Airbus OneWeb

Company OneWeb LTD announced that satellite manufacturer for the project will be engaged in global satellite Internet company Airbus Defence and Space - unit Airbus Group SE. Airbus will produce 900 satellites, 600 of which will be launched in the first place. The deal was announced at the Paris Air Show .

Company OneWeb LTD, formerly WorldVu, announced itself in 2014. Her goal - to create a network of nearly 1,000 small satellites that will provide access to the Internet across the globe. Half of the satellites are in orbit at an altitude of 800 km, the other - at a height of 950 km. Estimated project is scheduled for 2019, the project cost is approximately $ 3 billion. In 2014 the company bought the frequency spectrum needed for the operation of satellites, which will work in the K_u-диапазоне (12 to 18 GHz).



Director Tom Enders Airbus Group and founder Greg Wyler OneWeb found at the exhibition with French President Francois Oland / BBC i>

Earlier plans to build a satellite network for the Internet stated by Google. In 2010, she started financing the project O3b Networks (o3b means «other three billion», or "other three billion" who do not have access to the Internet). In the end, the Internet giant abandoned plans to build a satellite network, and focused on the project to ensure access to the Internet via repeaters on balloons. In this regard, in 2014, employees who worked before in the Google project O3b, moved into OneWeb.

In a period of a project OneWeb interested billionaire Elon Musk, but the result was another company to sponsor well-known businessman - Richard Branson, head of Virgin. In addition to its assets, Virgin can offer a system for launching satellites, because the moment the company is working on a such a system with commercial suborbital flight. But the operator of satellite launches OneWeb not yet officially announced.

OneWeb plans that the mass of the satellite will be about 150 kg, and the manufacturing cost is not to exceed half a million dollars. It announced that the company will be Airbus 'industrial partner', which is likely to mean the influx of investments in the project on her part. The first batch of 10 satellites to be built in France in Toulouse, where the production facilities are located Airbus. Then the assembly will begin in the United States.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/252082/