India puts flock of Franco-British satellites into orbit in lucrative launch

India this month put 36 OneWeb satellites into orbit in a single mission that could see the subcontinent's most powerful rocket challenge European rivals in the global commercial launch market.

India is now firmly established in the satellite launch business. AP

OneWeb, owned by British, French and Indian communications and internet companies, said the successful 25 March launch would ramp up its broadband services globally.

OneWeb now has 462 satellites in orbit and is on target to achieve global coverage in 2024 with a constellation of 648 devices.

India hailed the mission involving its largest rocket, Launch Vehicle Mark-3 or LVM-3, as analysts said the 36 private spacecraft placed at an altitude of 450 kilometres would also end the domination of the Starlink satellite constellation controlled by Elon Musk.

Congratulations @NSIL_India @INSPACeIND @ISRO on yet another successful launch of LVM3 with 36 @OneWeb satellites. It reinforces India’s leading role as a global commercial launch service provider in the true spirit of Aatmanirbharta. https://t.co/GflGAN2Wlr

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 26, 2023

Space pitch

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) thanked OneWeb for choosing ISRO's three-stage workhorse rocket. The mission cost 58 million euros.

“The mission demonstrated the rocket’s capability to place large, heavy satellites in the correct orbit without any glitch,” ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said of the launch vehicle, which thundered onto the global commercial market last October.

Each of the OneWeb satellites weighed about 150 kilograms.

“We look forward to greater engagement with our commercial partners and to making this rocket one of the best in its class,” he added.

ISRO said 16 of the OneWeb payloads were put into orbit 19 minutes after the rocket blasted off while the remaining 20 were ejected in batches of four in a 33-minute exercise.

“The 36 satellites were deployed in a sequential manner ... nine steps with four satellites each,” mission director S. Mohan Kumar added.

Trustworthy rocket

Durairaj Radhakrishnan, in charge of a team that designed the rocket, said the launch was “extremely challenging” for ISRO, which stunned the world in 2014 when an Indian spacecraft reached Mars on its first attempt.

The March launch was the sixth flight of LVM-3 and a public endorsement of India’s heaviest rocket which was first used in a 2019 lunar mission.

But last August, an Indian rocket was lost in space on its maiden flight casting a cloud over the 53-year-old ISRO’s ambitions of placing cheaper and smaller satellites in orbit and gaining a toehold in the affordable launch market set to grow four-fold to 12 billion euros by 2030.

The lost rocket was the latest entrant in India’s stable of three operational rockets and was designed to carry satellites weighing between five and 500 kilograms.

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Its failure was the second setback for India’s earth observation satellite programme. In 2021, one such satellite riding a regular rocket was scrapped because of launch problems.

India in 2020 opened its shuttered space industry to private firms in an effort to claim a larger slice of the commercial launch market, where it holds a two-percent stake despite being a space-faring nation of heft.

In 2019, ISRO tried to reach the Moon to bring credibility to its space program but the Indian spaceship lost contact while descending and the lander crashed on the lunar surface.

ISRO is now gearing up for its most challenging mission, the effort to put astronauts on the Moon after two dummy runs for a total expedition budget of 1.1 billion euros.

The LVM-3 is the hot favourite to power the daring mission, experts say.