There are three dozen private broadband satellites that are scheduled to launch on Friday, and not everyone is happy about it.
The OneWeb internet satellites will be on the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan tomorrow (March 2), according to an update on the Russian space agency's website.
The launch of the Soyuz is on Friday at 5:41 p.m. Baikonur has a local time of 3:41 a.m. on March 6. Some people are questioning if the liftoff should go on.
Satellite photos show a Russian military convoy.
The chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee is a United Kingdom Member of Parliament. Jones sent a letter to the UK's Minister for Science, Research and Innovation asking if the situation was inappropriate given the current situation.
Jones shared a letter that states that the UK government had a say in OneWeb's affairs. Jones asks if his department will intervene in this situation by engaging with the OneWeb board in its capacity as a major shareholder and also raises the possibility of helping OneWeb find alternative launch providers.
OneWeb is building an internet constellation. The majority of the company's rockets have flown from Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia or Baikonur. The most recent OneWeb mission sent 34 satellites to space from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. Last week, it was announced that the launches from French Guiana would be suspended.
The additional satellites that will fill out the initial constellation are all scheduled to launch on Soyuz vehicles from Baikonur this year.
A number of high-profile companies have stopped doing business with Russian government enterprises because of the invasion of Ukraine. British Petroleum and Shell recently announced that they were pulling out of partnerships with Russian state-owned energy companies.
Jonathan McDowell is an astronomer and satellite tracker based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
From a source, the upcoming OneWeb launch is better than trying to get the sats out of Russian hands. No more money will change hands. It seems a reasonable way to go, according to McDowell. The set of U.S. rules designed to keep defense-related technologies out of the hands of the adversary nations is called ITAR.
The company has not given any indication that Friday's launch won't happen.
Mike Wall is the author of Out There, a book about the search for alien life. You can follow him on social media. Follow us on social media.
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