London-based satellite operator OneWeb is in the home straight after putting up another 40 spacecraft this week.
It takes the company’s in-orbit broadband constellation to over 580.
With one more launch in the coming weeks, OneWeb will have enough satellites overhead to deliver an internet connection anywhere on Earth.
The firm has moved rapidly to recover its position after financial collapse at the start of Covid in March 2020.
When the UK government and Indian conglomerate Bharti bought it out of bankruptcy a few months later, it was flying fewer than 80 spacecraft.
The scale-up since then had been nothing short of remarkable, said CEO Neil Masterson, with customers now being served in 15 countries north of 50 degrees in latitude, which includes the UK.
« We issued our first invoice last May, which is obviously a very important moment for us. And as of the end of December, we’ve got $800m in backlog bookings. So we’re cracking on and we’re excited to be expanding around the rest of the world, really showing what this network system can do, » he told BBC News.
