Priority to European sovereignty. After the launch of the Galileo radio navigation system, in service since 2016, and autonomous from the American GPS, Europe intends to quickly acquire a constellation of satellites that provide high-speed Internet. The goal, this time, is not to depend on the networks of the two American billionaires, Elon Musk’s Starlink, and soon Jeff Bezos’ Kuiper.
Hence the launch two years ago, in November 2022, of the Iris² project, an acronym for resilience infrastructure and secure satellite interconnection, at the initiative of Thierry Breton, then European Commissioner for Industry. For this project, an investment of around 10 billion euros is estimated, in which all the main space actors on the continent will participate.
On Wednesday, October 30, a step was taken with the awarding of the concession contract to the SpaceRISE consortium, made up of three satellite operators: the French Eutelsat, the Luxembourgish SES and the Spanish Hispasat. This group will have as partners the satellite manufacturers Thales Alenia Space, OHB, Airbus Defense and Space; the telecommunications groups Telespazio, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Hisdesat and finally Thales SIX, specialized in secure information systems for defense.
The signing of the concession contract is scheduled for the end of December. This public-private partnership provides, according to the Commission, “acquire a system composed of more than 290 satellites in different orbits and the associated ground segment to provide government services by 2030 while enabling commercial services”.
Franco-German differences
As Starlink has shown, since the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, having a space communications tool is vital in the event of failure of terrestrial links, but also in the event of a cyber attack. Therefore, the Twenty-Seven should have secure connections, mainly for military use, and the future constellation will also provide high-speed Internet in white areas, devoid of connection.
However, Iris² differs from Starlink or Kuiper by its small number of satellites, a few hundred compared to the thousands of the others, because it is not about multiplying these objects by the size of a shoebox in low orbit and saturating a little space. more than 300 to 1,200 kilometers. The constellation will be able to go from a low orbit to a geostationary one, 36,000 kilometers from Earth.
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