SpaceX has launched 20 Eutelsat OneWeb broadband satellites into orbit

SpaceX sent a set of Internet satellites into orbit for another company on Sunday (October 20) morning.

SpaceX launched the last batch of Eutelsat OneWeb's V1 satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket at 1:13 a.m. EDT (0513 GMT; 10:13 p.m. local California time) Sunday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned, touching down at Vandenberg's Landing Zone 4 about eight minutes after liftoff. This was the seventh launch and landing of this particular booster, according to the SpaceX mission description.

The Falcon 9 upper stage continues to carry 20 satellites into low Earth orbit. It will deploy them in 20-minute spans, starting 59 minutes after liftoff, if all goes according to plan.

Related: SpaceX launches 40 OneWeb Internet satellites into orbit, rockets land

Eutelsat OneWeb's most recent launch with SpaceX on May 20, 2023, brings the company's constellation to 634 satellites. At the time, Eutelsat OneWeb said the new batch of 16 satellites would be enough to take their services global.

“OneWeb is on track to deliver 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 known as OneWeb; the merger with Eutelsat took place in September 2023.)

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

Prior to that effort, SpaceX had sent three sets of OneWeb satellites on a set of 40 spacecraft.

SpaceX's contract to launch the Eutelsat OneWeb satellite dates back to March 2022, after the latter company pivoted from a contract to use Russian-made Soyuz rockets through French company Arianespace.

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

Those conditions were that the spacecraft would not be used for military purposes and that the UK would divest itself of the company's investors. OneWeb did not enter and the Soyuz was lowered from the launch pad at the Roscosmos-operated Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, loaded with satellites.