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General discussion => Satellite industry news => Topic started by: NewsHound on June 06, 2019, 07:15 PM
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Virgin Orbit takes OneWeb to court over canceled launch contract
According to a complaint Virgin Orbit filed June 4 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, OneWeb canceled 35 of its planned 39 launches last June, triggering a $70 million termination fee.
SpaceNews.com
WASHINGTON — Virgin Orbit is suing OneWeb for refusing to pay a termination fee for canceling all but four of the 39 launches it ordered from Virgin Orbit in 2015 to fill gaps in its planned constellation of at least 648 broadband satellites.
According to a complaint Virgin Orbit filed June 4 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, OneWeb canceled 35 of its planned 39 launches last June, triggering a $70 million termination fee. Virgin Orbit says OneWeb still owes $46.3 million. The lawsuit was first reported by Law360.com.
OneWeb, the complaint says, agreed four years ago to pay Virgin Orbit $234 million — or $6 million a launch — to loft its satellites one or two at a time into low Earth orbit using the air-launched LauncherOne vehicle the Long Beach, California, company expects to debut this year.
OneWeb, which counts Virgin Orbit founder Richard Branson among its investors, launched its first six satellites in February aboard an Arianespace Soyuz rocket and intends to continue using Soyuz to deploy the bulk of its constellation 35 satellites at a time.
OneWeb spokesman Katie Dowd declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
Will Pomerantz, vice president of special projects at Virgin Orbit, said June 6 the company still expects to fly at least four missions for OneWeb.
“While we don’t have a comment on this matter specifically, we’d like to voice our on-going support for OneWeb’s mission of providing affordable, low-latency internet access across the globe via satellite,” Pomerantz said by email. “We are excited by the success of OneWeb’s initial test satellites, and we look forward to flying their spacecraft soon, and to helping support and sustain their constellation for many successful years to come.”
Jeff Foust and Caleb Henry contributed to this story from Washington.
SpaceNews.com
Source: Virgin Orbit takes OneWeb to court over canceled launch contract (https://spacenews.com/virgin-orbit-takes-oneweb-to-court-over-canceled-launch-contract/)