SpaceX’s Starlink competitor disappears after failing to account for leap years

French satellite operator Eutelsat failed to account for leap years last year, leading to an embarrassing 48-hour outage in service.

OneWeb’s satellite constellation has restored Internet services after an outage that began on December 31, 2024, Eutelsat certain Thursday. “The root cause has been identified as a software issue within the ground sector,” the company wrote in a brief statement. “The constellation is nominally operational again.”

Joanna Darlington, Eutelsat’s chief communications and investor relations officer, told Via Satellite that the leap year 2024 “seems to be the most likely cause” of the software glitch. Failure to account for an extra day this year likely disrupted the Internet Constellation program, resulting in a temporary outage.

Eutelsat operates a fleet of more than 630 satellites in low Earth orbit. The company has been building its OneWeb constellation since 2020, sending out constellations of satellites designed to broadcast high-speed internet around the world.

The road was not easy for Eutelsat. The company originally relied on a Russian Soyuz rocket to launch its satellites, but its relationship with Roscosmos quickly deteriorated after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In response to Western sanctions imposed on Russia, Roscosmos refused to launch OneWeb satellites unless the company agreed to do so. Agreed to a List of demands. OneWeb refused, prompting Russia maintains 36 of its satellites At a storage facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The company then had to rely on its Internet competitor SpaceX, as well as the Indian Space Research Organisation, to launch its satellites.

Although Launch of the final batch of 36 satellites In March 2023, Eutelsat was unable to deploy broadband coverage worldwide due to delays Obtaining approval for ground infrastructure In major countries such as India, Thailand and Turkey. As a result, OneWeb’s Internet services are currently only available in the Americas and some parts of Europe and Asia. The company hopes to solve its problems this year, and launch its full services by the spring Space news.

Compared to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, OneWeb is geared toward Internet service providers (ISPs) and other business customers. While Starlink delivers its services directly to end users, OneWeb is more of an infrastructure provider than a direct-to-consumer service.

Eutelsat recently commander 100 broadband satellites from Airbus to begin the process of modernizing its constellation within a few years, with the end-of-life of its satellites sometime between 2027 to 2028. Having overcome the latest glitch, the company is also keen to ensure this does not happen again, so no more Excuses in 2028.