The preparation of the 36 OneWeb spacecraft for the launch aboard the Soyuz-2.1 b launch vehicle with the Fregat upper stage began on Tuesday at the Vostochny Spaceport; the launch is scheduled for the end of April.

On Monday the OneWeb satellites arrived at Ignatievo airport (Blagoveshchensk) by an An-124-100 aircraft on Monday and the specialists of the Vostochny Space Center (a branch of TsENKI, part of Roscosmos) transported all of them to the Spaceport.

European launch services provider Arianespace provides and operates the launch of the OneWeb spacecraft using the Soyuz launch vehicle, under the contracts with Glavkosmos (a subsidiary of the State Space Corporation Roscosmos) and the Russian-French company Starsem, in close cooperation with other Roscosmos enterprises: Progress Space Rocket Center, Lavochkin Association, and TsENKI.

Today the OneWeb low Earth orbit fleet of satellites has 146 spacecraft, and hundreds of others are to be launched. The upcoming launch should bring the number of OneWeb spacecraft in orbit to 182.

OneWeb low Earth orbit spacecraft are designed to provide consumers on the ground with high-speed Internet directly through satellite communications.