Jeff Bezos

Oneweb , the high-profile London-based satellite start-up, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.

The Company , which is building a network to broadband connections in The World , the fault of the Covid-19 crisis for its inability to secure new Investment .

to say it was the dismissal of most of its staff while it seeks a buyer for The Company .

in a constellation is planned to have a total of at least 648 spaceship.

The idea is that this network with high-bandwidth and low-latency internet connections to every point on the earth, the bar in the Antarctic.

rumors of a collapse had swirling around Oneweb last week. It's £2 had to be increased. 6bn the implementation of your project, but experts in the space industry speculated that the double sum would be necessary, in order for The System to complete.

The Declaration of Oneweb in the early morning hours of Saturday, time for London, said The Company had since procurement of the financing, but that "The Process is not, as the financial impact of the market turmoil in connection with the distribution of Covid-19".

CEO Adrian Steckel added: "Today is a difficult day for us here at Oneweb . So many people have so much energy, effort and passion for this Company and our mission have prescribed. Our hope is that this process will allow us to carve out a path that leads to the termination of our mission, building on the year-long efforts and the billions of invested Capital . "

the largest unsecured creditor, The Rocket operator, Arianespace, the Soyuz vehicles to loft satellites for Oneweb . is It is owed $238m.

Oneweb plan was first presented in detail to the media.

Early supporters included Airbus, Intelsat, Bharti Enterprises , Coca-Cola, group Salinas, Hughes Network Systems, and the Virgin Group . Softbank was a major investor.

However, the development of a satellite constellation is a very expensive endeavor and the history of the sector is full of companies, which is also the end of the search for Chapter 11 protection with the U.S. bankruptcy court.

Some have managed to pull through it - The Classic example, of Iridium is The First low-Earth-orbit-satellite-phone-network was launched.

Oneweb is looking to do the same. As well as the successful launch of the 74-satellite, it has valuable radio spectrum rights and has always needed to half of the 44 ground stations for the operation of its constellation. It is hoped that this progress will prove attractive to a new owner.

Oneweb was in competition with the Californian entrepreneur Elon Musk 's SpaceX Company is to build a satellite-internet-mega-constellation. His rocket putting are regularly up to 60 satellites simultaneously.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , the richest man in The World , is also working on a concept he called the Kuiper.

If there is no buyer for a Oneweb or its assets can be found values, the government of the United Kingdom is ultimately responsible for the 74 space ship In Orbit .

As a licensing condition, to carry it, which involved The Liability , if these satellites are in an accident.

Source of news: bbc.com