MERRITT ISLAND, Fla. — In the Shakespeare play, The Tempest, the King of Naples’ jester, Trinculo, while trapped in a storm and seeking shelter on an island, utters the now famous and often interpreted phrase, “… misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Fast forward to the present and another English icon, OneWeb, also finds itself with what may seem like a “strange bedfellow": SpaceX.

The two companies have global ambitions for their satellite internet constellations. An Oct. 22 launch for OneWeb in India added 36 more satellites to its constellation, bringing its total to 462 out of a planned 648 generation one-satellite constellation.

Less than a week later, SpaceX last launched a batch of its Starlink constellation satellites on Oct. 27, bringing its total launched to date up to 3,558, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks Starlink and other low-Earth orbit (LEO) bodies. It has also been expanding its offering of Starlink services to include residential, business, RV, maritime and aviation.

But in September, the two companies — along with Iridium, another satellite internet provider — jointly issued a white paper dubbed “Satellite Orbital Safety Best Practices,” in an effort to help chart guidelines and norms for satellite operators in low-Earth orbit.

Leading up to its first launch as a SpaceX customer, OneWeb posted a tongue-in-cheek tweet, showing its support for its new launch partner.

How did we get here?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier in the year forced OneWeb to find a new launch provider after 13 previous missions with the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

An investors report from OneWeb reveals that it was a costly cut with Roscosmos to the tune of $229.2 million, partly due to the delay in the launch, but also because OneWeb said that Russia stole its satellites.

“An impairment charge of $229.2 million has been recognized to reflect the loss suffered by (OneWeb) as a result of the postponement of a planned launch on 4 March 2022, the associated postponement of subsequent scheduled launches, the loss of satellites not returned to [OneWeb] and the impairment of a portion of (OneWeb)’s prepaid launch insurance,” the company wrote in its Annual Report.

The first 13 missions for these satellites were launched overseas in either Kazakhstan or French Guiana, but the satellites themselves were made at the Airbus OneWeb Satellites (AOS) facility on Merritt Island, just down the road from the Kennedy Space Center.

AOS Chief Executive Officer James Hinds told Spectrum News in a one-on-one interview that it was challenging during that period of uncertainty.

“Everything moves slightly to the right because you lost a launch vehicle, which had the capability to move out with a constellation,” Hinds said. “So, there is that natural time where you’ve got to keep people’s spirits up, you know, there has been a delay. But we’re still going to deliver this for our customer.

“So, you just have to work with your team to get everyone to lift up their chins high, you know, to look forward.”

Eventually, following the separation from Roscosmos, OneWeb signed new launch contracts with both NewSpace India Ltd. and SpaceX.

The historic launch of 36 satellites from India marked the first of these missions, and now with SpaceX supporting the OneWeb Launch 15 mission on Thursday, it all comes much closer to home for Hinds and his team.

“We can actually have our whole team and their family and friends actually seeing the launch, seeing their good work and seeing how we’ve partnered with Airbus and OneWEb to make this a reality,” Hinds said. “I’m playing it a little bit deadpan, but we are very excited.”

Neighbors launching neighbors

The prospect of seeing their work launch from their backyard for the first time was exciting. Nevertheless, the notion of shifting their workflow at AOS, from dealing with one launch provider to now two different ones, was “quite a challenge,” according to Hinds.

“And I really stress ‘the challenge.’ Normally, it takes a year-and-a-half. You have a lot of iterations where I could tell you what I can do, you can tell me what I can do in terms of that interface and we have to work together to actually come to a point of agreement,” Hinds said.

On top of figuring out how to integrate their satellites onto the SpaceX and NSIL rockets, they had to go through the paces of demonstrating that all the minutiae, like mechanical and thermal systems, will work in concert with the rockets, he said.

“I’ll be absolutely honest, at times you get frustrated, but you’ve got to see through that,” Hinds said. “It’s massive to actually see all of that work with the calculator, on paper, with discussion, actually manifesting itself into spacecraft in that launch cavity.”

Hinds said a special thanks had to go to entities like the Kennedy Space Center (which will host the launch at Launch Complex 39A), Space Florida and the Economic Development Council of Florida’s Space Coast for their help in supporting the turnaround.

“All these people have come together to make that dream, not only being a launch base, but to actually produce the items, which are launch, which I think was very much a part of their dream,” Hinds said.

Thursday’s launch will be the first of three with SpaceX. The other two are planned for sometime in 2023. But while the constellation in LEO will become about 80% complete with OneWeb Launch 15, the manufacturing work for this constellation is just about done.

But because the satellite manufactured by AOS is moldable to other missions, the factory isn’t coming to a halt by any means, though the pace of production is slowing a bit.

“If you walk through the factory, like you did several months ago, you won’t see every single station busy, but you’ll see the back end of the factory busy, which is the last couple of steps to get spacecraft out of the door,” Hinds said. “But in addition, what we’re also doing is we’re looking at the capability for the future. So, we have already started looking at parts of the factory, which we can remodel, getting ready for that next and future contracts.”

While he wasn’t able to disclose many details at this point, Hinds said that they AOS is working toward two more product lines at the facility. It is also working on integrating new propulsion systems from Astra.

With launch right around the corner, Hinds said he couldn’t be prouder for the opportunity to be able to stand beside the full AOS team for the first time as the satellites launch from the Space Coast.

“When you see it on a video screen, it’s one thing. You can feel the excitement, but when you’re actually physically there, you can see it, you can hear it, you can even feel it,” Hinds said. “And then you can raise a glass with all your colleagues. It’s amazing.”