But on Wednesday the chief of Russia’s space program, Dmitry Rogozin, issued two demands before acceding to the launch. One, he said, OneWeb must guarantee that its satellites will not be used for military purposes. And two, the UK government must give up its ownership of OneWeb.
These extraordinary demands would seem to be non-starters. OneWeb has already pitched national defense agencies, including the United Kingdom, on using OneWeb satellites to facilitate rich networks of data for enhanced decision-making during military activities. And it is virtually impossible to see the UK government agreeing to Russian demands about what it does, and does not, own.
OneWeb refused and canceled all its future Soyuz launches. But it has been unable to retrieve the satellites from their Soyuz launchsite at the Russia-owned Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellites are worth a combined $50 million, OneWeb chief executive Neil Masterson said Tuesday.
I spend no time thinking about it. We’ve completely moved on," Masterson said, deferring any future retrieval efforts to government authorities. “There is value getting them back, but I can tell you that I’m not getting them back any time soon.”
Rogozin shenanigans from a couple years ago:
Russia places extraordinary demands on OneWeb prior to satellite launch
OneWeb ‘moves on’ from Soyuz-stranded satellites as its network nears completion