OneWeb 15

OneWeb had launched 14 batches of its broadband constellation aboard Russian Soyuz rockets, acquiring 464 satellites in orbit before Russia's invasion of Ukraine halted everything. In March 2022, with a Soyuz and 36 OneWeb satellites already at Baikonur, Russian authorities demanded the UK government — a major OneWeb shareholder — divest its stake and guarantee the satellites would not serve military purposes. The UK declined, and OneWeb suspended all Soyuz launches.

Within weeks OneWeb had signed with SpaceX, a direct competitor building its own constellation. On 8 December 2022, Falcon 9 lifted 40 OneWeb satellites from Kennedy Space Center into a 600 km polar orbit — OneWeb's fifteenth launch overall, and its first without a Russian rocket. The constellation reached 504 satellites that night, most of the way toward the roughly 648 needed for initial global coverage.