SpaceX will launch 20 Eutelsat OneWeb broadband satellites into space on October 20

SpaceX plans to send a series of internet satellites into orbit for another company early Sunday morning (October 20).

SpaceX plans to deliver the final batch of Eutelsat OneWeb's V1 satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base at 1:13 a.m. EDT (05:13 GMT; 10:13 p.m. local time) on Sunday start.

You can follow the live broadcast via SpaceX's stream on X, formerly Twitter.

If all goes according to plan, the Falcon 9's first stage will return to Earth at Vandenberg's Landing Zone 4 about eight minutes after liftoff.

Related: SpaceX launches 40 OneWeb internet satellites into orbit and lands a rocket

Eutelsat OneWeb's recent launch with SpaceX on May 20, 2023 increased the company's constellation to 634 satellites. At the time, Eutelsat OneWeb said the new group of 16 satellites would be enough to offer its services worldwide.

“OneWeb is on track to provide global coverage this year and is already in the process of scaling services to customers around the world,” company officials said at the time. (The company was then called OneWeb; the merger with Eutelsat took place in September 2023.)

“With the addition of the satellites deployed since this launch, OneWeb will increase the resiliency and redundancy of the constellation as it expands its services to its growing base of enterprise and government customers.”

Previously, SpaceX launched three sets of OneWeb satellites in batches of 40 spacecraft.

SpaceX's agreement to launch the Eutelsat OneWeb satellites dates back to March 2022, after the latter company backed out of an agreement to deploy Russian-built Soyuz rockets via French company Arianespace.

Shortly after Russia's unauthorized invasion of Ukraine, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said it would not launch 36 OneWeb satellites, which would then be mounted on a Soyuz rocket, unless the company met two conditions.

These conditions were that the spacecraft would not be used for military purposes and that the United Kingdom would part ways with the company's investors. OneWeb did not agree and the Soyuz was rolled with satellites off the launch pad of the Roskosmos-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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