Europe’s proposed sovereign broadband constellation is slowly chugging along, carrying with it the non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite upgrades that SES and Eutelsat will need to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
The European Commission recently outlined plans to finalize a contract in December for designing and operating more than 290 satellites, following a best and final offer from a group led by SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat.
Key details remain undisclosed, such as the number of NGSO satellites planned for low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO), doing little to counter perceptions that Europe’s answer to Starlink and China’s constellation plans risk being too little, too late.
The official goal is to have the constellation up and running by 2030 — three years later than planned. However, an industry insider told SpaceNews their internal projection for global Ka-band services has already shifted to 2031-2032.
Despite ongoing challenges, progress on IRIS², or Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite, is a meaningful boost for Europe’s future competitiveness in space.
While IRIS² would chiefly serve government needs, the program would subsidize SES and Eutelsat’s next-generation satellite technology in MEO and LEO, respectively.
Europe has not given an update on the project’s cost but earlier agreed to fund 60% of a previously estimated 6 billion euro ($6.5 billion) budget, with the private industry covering the rest.
Press reports have put the current cost of IRIS² at more than 10 billion euros, and a person familiar with the matter said Europe is being asked to provide about 6 billion euros of this.
SES and Eutelsat would each contribute around 2 billion euros, and their much smaller partner, Hispasat, would provide the rest. Hispasat does not operate an NGSO network and will likely focus on supporting the project’s ground systems.
Importantly, government contributions would be front-loaded, requiring the operators to pay their share much closer to the constellation’s launch toward the end of this decade.
That gives Eutelsat time to generate revenues from OneWeb LEO services, slated to be available globally in spring 2025 following ground segment delays. SES also expects to have launched all the satellites in its next-generation O3b mPower MEO network by the end of 2026.
In the meantime, the operators would start getting paid next year to research IRIS² technology, which would symbiotically feed into their own NGSO next generation constellation plans in various ways.
Tapping into synergiesChristophe Caudrelier, Eutelsat’s chief financial officer, said the operator “would have the capacity to add some payload on this [Ka-band] constellation,” in a Nov. 8 call with New Street Research analyst Ben Rickett. Eutelsat’s OneWeb LEO satellites operate in Ku-band.
“Eventually, we could have the possibility to add some satellites in addition to the [IRIS²] constellation,” Caudrelier added, noting that Europe would still own the vast majority of the constellation.
A portion of IRIS² Ka-band capacity would also be reserved for commercial use.
The IRIS² opportunity led Eutelsat to hold off replacing OneWeb satellites with significantly upgraded versions as its initial LEO spacecraft approach the end of their operational lifespans in the coming years.
“It’s not that there will be on one side IRIS² and, on another side, another constellation, which will be completely in parallel, not talking together or not combining their capacity,” Caudrelier said.
SES CEO Adel Al-Saleh told investors in a Nov. 7 earnings call that the company would reveal significantly more details about IRIS² in February when it reports earnings.
“IRIS² will allow us to expand SES’s differentiated MEO offering to keep pace with the rapidly expanding demand, where we’re constrained today, and gives us access to a MEO constellation with owner-economics when needed,” Al-Saleh said.
IRIS² is also slated to enter service when the O3b mPower business is due to be at a steady state, he added, adding that the combination would enable SES to keep up with expanding demand well into the next decade.
He added: “How many times do we get an opportunity when the government is willing to invest at least 50% of the required investment in a contract like this?”
However, even after IRIS² is signed off in December, it would take more than a year to validate the project’s feasibility.
Meanwhile, SpaceX plans to leverage its upcoming Starship rocket to accelerate the deployment of increasingly capable Starlink satellites. Broadband constellations from Amazon and Telesat are also on track to join the fray well before the next decade.
This article first appeared in the December 2024 edition of SpaceNews Magazine.