The European Commission selected a team led by Eutelsat<\/b>, Hispasat<\/b>, and SES<\/b> to build IRIS\u00b2 \u2014 Europe\u2019s future multi-orbit satellite constellation. <\/p>\n
The three European satellite operators will lead a consortium called SpaceRISE, which includes European subcontractors: Thales Alenia Space<\/b>, OHB<\/b>, Airbus Defence and Space<\/b>, Telespazio<\/b>, Deutsche Telekom<\/b>, Orange<\/b>, Hisdesat<\/b>, and Thales SIX<\/b>.<\/p>\n
With this news, the procurement enters its final phase and the European Commission said it expects to sign the contract by December 2024. <\/p>\n
IRIS\u00b2 will be Europe\u2019s third flagship space program after Galileo and Copernicus. It is planned as a constellation of 290 satellites in both Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) and Low-Earth (LEO) to provide secure connectivity services to the EU and its Member States, along with broadband connectivity. <\/p>\n
According to the EC, it will be a 12-year contract for a public-private partnership to acquire the satellites and ground segment to provide government services by 2030 and enable commercial services. It will be funded by a combination of EU, European Space Agency, and private financing from the three satellite operators.<\/p>\n
Investment in the constellation and its nature as public-private partnership could influence the next-generation of Eutelsat OneWeb and future versions of SES\u2019s O3b mPOWER. <\/p>\n
Eutelsat CEO Eva Bernke said the constellation will complement and enhance Eutelsat\u2019s existing LEO capabilities. \u201cThe IRIS\u00b2 programme is a powerful extension of Eutelsat\u2019s commitment to advancing Europe\u2019s digital sovereignty through sustained investment in multi-orbit technology to deliver multi-layered, low-latency networks, which are essential to Europe\u2019s strategic resilience,\u201d Berneke said.<\/p>\n
SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh commented: \u201cThe IRIS\u00b2 system is aligned with SES\u2019s multi-orbit network and underscores our commitment to advancing our MEO capabilities, as well as having access to LEO orbit.\u201d <\/p>\n
Analysys Mason Research Director Lluc Palerm-Serra told Via Satellite<\/em> this program is \u201ccritical\u201d for the European space industry to develop technologies for LEO while lowering the risk. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is very exciting as the commission has expressed interest in incorporating new concepts such as 3GPP standards and regenerative payloads which can be something that can help IRIS\u00b2 differentiate from other constellations and push the envelope of the whole industry,\u201d Palerm-Serra said. <\/p>\n \u201cEurope needed sovereign access to LEO capacity and this is one of the main purposes for IRIS\u00b2, together with supporting the development of the European Space industry,\u201d he noted, comparing it to U.S. government contracts with SpaceX and Starlink, and Canada\u2019s support for Telesat Lightspeed. <\/p>\n The award is not a surprise as SpaceRISE was the only consortium negotiating with the commission. But Palerm-Serra noted it took several iterations on the scope of the agreement to reach this deal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The European Commission selected a team led by Eutelsat, Hispasat, and SES to build IRIS\u00b2 \u2014 Europe\u2019s future multi-orbit satellite constellation. The three European satellite operators will lead a consortium called SpaceRISE, which includes European subcontractors: Thales Alenia Space, OHB, Airbus Defence and Space, Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat, and Thales SIX. With this news, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}