The time for talk is over. After seven months of negotiations, officials from the European Commission, ESA, EUSPA, and SpaceRISE—the latter being a consortium of SES, Eutelsat, and HispaSat—have agreed to move into the implementation phase of IRIS2.
The agreement also dramatically increases the scope of the constellation. While IRIS2 was expected to include 290 satellites with a €10.55B ($12.1B) price tag, the constellation will now have at least 348 sats—330 in LEO and 18 in MEO—and cost ~€15.6B ($17.95B).
Division of labor: Europe’s major satellite operators have outlined their tasks for the years ahead:
- SES will design and build the payloads for 18 MEO sats, and expects to commit €1.35B ($1.55B) to the program;
- Eutelsat will invest €2.23B ($2.57B) in the shared constellation, and lead development of the 330 LEO satellites.
- HispaSat will act as the prime contractor for the constellation’s ground antenna and control network under a €1.6B+ budget. HispaSat has also committed €600M in exchange for rights to use IRIS2 for commercial purposes, and announced it would lead development of an additional 20-sat VLEO portion of the constellation, which would operate alongside the LEO and MEO fleets.
The rest of the constellation’s funding—~€11.6B ($13.4B)—will come mainly from EU member states and EU budget resources. So far, the program has garnered up to €2B ($2.3B) in commitments from Spain, €656M ($754.9M) from Poland, and €500M ($575.4M) from Hungary.
That money will directly fund the development and deployment of the constellation, which is aiming to launch its first satellites on board a European launcher in 2029.
But it’s not just the primes that stand to benefit from the ~50% budget increase. The European Commission’s announcement highlighted a broad team of potential subcontractors for the project including Airbus Defence and Space, Thales Alenia Space, OHB, and Aerospacelab.
Run faster, jump higher: Despite a history of schedule and budget overruns on past pan-European constellations (cough, Galileo), the EU commission is projecting a new era of speed for IRIS2.
“By accelerating the delivery of early defense and security services and reinforcing the IRIS² architecture, we will not only bring the network into operation ahead of schedule, but also boost secure governmental capacity by more than 60% within the union,” Andrius Kubilius, European commissioner for defence and space, said in a statement.
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