- Bringing European space fabric back to life
- Hispasat, the secure communications solution for ESA and NATO
The European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) hastily signed two major contracts of a strategic nature, through which the two organizations are trying to catch up with the United States and China, the two superpowers vying for global domination in the field of multimedia satellite communications.
The program was named Iris2, which stands for Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite. This is the third major space project in which Brussels is participating, after Galileo, the European satellite navigation system which competes with the American GPS, and Copernicus, the largest Earth observation program in the world. It is of such magnitude that its initial investment volume is estimated at 10.6 billion euros to respond to a triple technological, economic and security challenge.
On the one hand, it provides the authorities of the European institutions and their member states with secure sovereign communications. This is an additional step in the search for strategic autonomy through the construction in orbit of a large space constellation of an intergovernmental nature, providing from 2030 high-speed, low-latency encrypted connectivity services, proof against jamming and eavesdropping.
Secondly, and this is just as important, if not more important, than the first objective, it is a question of revitalizing the damaged production lines of the satellite and rocket industries of the Old Continent and of getting them out of the serious crisis that they cross. With the official activation of Iris2 two weeks ago, Brussels is throwing a multi-billion euro lifeline to prevent the main German, French and Italian space companies from dragging down the entire industrial fabric with their fall. European.
Ultimately, the underlying goal is to oppose tycoon Elon Musk’s mega-space constellation Starlink and Amazon’s soon-to-be-deployed Kuiper network in a belated attempt to prevent these two companies to gobble up the European market between them. And, of course, it also seeks to confront the large architectures that China has already begun to erect in space, the Qianfan and Guowang constellations, both programmed with thousands of satellites in low orbit.
Bringing European space fabric back to life
The Iris2 project was launched by the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Frenchman Thierry Breton, at the start of the first mandate of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. It took the form of a public-private partnership, in which the beneficiary companies associated within a consortium act under a Brussels concession regime for an initial period of twelve years.
The German Von del Leyen and its new defense and space commissioner, the Lithuanian Andrius Kubilius, want to develop, manufacture and put into orbit an intergovernmental constellation of very high security communications. It will include no less than 286 satellites, most in low or very low orbit – between 1,200 and less than 750 kilometers in altitude – and around twenty in medium orbit, at around 8,000 kilometers in altitude. They will of course be launched by European rockets, primarily the new Ariane 6, and will have advanced land infrastructure and associated services. All at a cost of 10.6 billion euros.
Of this sum of several billion euros, around 6 billion – 56.6% – comes from Brussels and the Member States; around 550 million – 5.2% – is the contribution of the ESA; and between 4.1 and 4.4 billion – approximately 38.7% – are the contribution of the companies grouped in the multinational SpaceRISE consortium, the consortium selected by Brussels last October for the design, launch and operation of the constellation .
The EU concession contract was signed on December 16 by the European Commission’s Director-General for Defence, Industry and Space, Finland’s Timo Pesonen. A second agreement was also initialed during the same ceremony by the ESA’s director of connectivity and secure communications, Frenchman Laurent Jaffart, in order to begin activating the supply chain of small and medium-sized businesses that must progress Iris2.
The two contracts were signed, on behalf of SpaceRISE, by the managers of the three companies that lead the consortium: Adel Al-Saleh, of American-British nationality, who since 2018 has led the Luxembourg company SES, the leading European commercial communications operator by satellite; Eva Berneke, who has headed the French company Eutelsat in Denmark since January 2022; and Miguel Ángel Panduro, who has headed the Spanish company Hispasat since September 2019.
Hispasat, the secure communications solution for ESA and NATO
In the distribution of investments agreed by the three major European operators of secure satellite communications which manage SpaceRISE, the French company Eutelsat has committed to investing “around 2,000 million euros”, the Luxembourg company SES “around 1,800 million » and the Spanish company Hispasat “up to 600 million”, according to the Spanish operator. The consortium also includes Airbus Defense and Space, Deutsche Telekom, OHB, Orange, Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space, Thales SIX and Spain’s Hisdesat, but there is no record of their possible investments.
Depending on each party’s financial participation, Hispasat’s mission is to design, develop and implement the land segment of Iris², where Indra and GMV, in particular, have strong capacities. These are “all the necessary facilities at different locations – control centers, service stations, remote controls and telemetry – for the management and operation of the different orbital layers of the constellation, as well as interconnection with terrestrial networks , all in compliance with strict security and resilience requirements,” assures the company.
Hispasat will also lead the very low orbital layer (Low LEO) of the constellation. There will be more than a dozen satellites placed at an altitude of less than 750 km, which will embark on “innovative missions interconnected with the rest of the constellation”. The Spanish company also assumes the role of service provider to the Member States, which includes the definition of the “service catalog, the design of the concept of operations and the procedures for their implementation”.
What is the role of ESA in the Iris2 program? As the EU’s technological and industrial partner in space, ESA carries out the main technical tasks on behalf of the European Commission. One of the most important is to be the qualification and validation authority of the project, which involves supervising the development activities of critical satellite elements, the interoperability between the different systems, the applied 5G standards and their infrastructures on the ground.
The Iris2 initiative was adopted on February 14 by the European Parliament with 603 votes for, 6 against and 39 abstentions, almost unanimously, and Brussels and the ESA have just given the green light. But the program is not without criticism. One is that the Atlantic Alliance, which clearly needs a high level of security for its satellite communications, has not committed to such an initiative.
Its solution is much more pragmatic and less expensive: it leases capacity on board communications satellites from NATO countries – for example, France, Italy, Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom – which meet its strict parameters for encrypted and secure communications. Of course, the Alliance does not depend on an industry that is in its lean period….
