3 ms·
I wonder what happens with the satellites. Are they just expected to decay?
by blackhaz 7y ago
I wonder what happens with the satellites. Are they just expected to decay?
- hylaride 7y agoThey eventually re-enter the atmosphere and burn up, especially if they’re low orbit.
- greglindahl 7y agoThey aren't in a low orbit, the decay time is a lot more than 25 years.
- hylaride 7y agoUsually at the end of their life, the owners intentional change their orbit to burn them up. I’m not sure about OneWeb, but most of the new satellite internet companies are/were planning low orbit satellites to keep latency down.
- greglindahl 7y agoA "low" (LEO) orbit doesn't necessarily mean that satellites burn up within 25 years if they fail and are unable to do a deorbit burn. Of the proposed constellations, the lowest orbit so far is Starlink. OneWeb is much higher but supposedly the satellites are more guaranteed to be reliable.
- mrfusion 7y agoI’m almost positive they have the means to De orbit them if they decide to.
- z3t4 7y agoWould be cool if they would let radio amateurs use them, rather then destroying. Could probably find many use cases, if not for learning and experimentation. Maybe use if for Internet peering.
- erwinh 7y agoThe FT article I think claims that after the bankruptcy there will remain a small team to maintain them for now. Don't know if the plan is to de-orbit them, maybe there are still some stakeholders interested in running some experiments on them...
- bryanlarsen 7y agoIt's Chapter 11 which means that they hope to maintain OneWeb as a viable business. Only if they convert to Chapter 7 would it mean they've given up on the business completely.