Europe signs €10.6bn Iris² satellite deal in bid to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink

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Europe has launched its most ambitious space programme in a decade, signing a contract to build a €10.6bn satellite network to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink in providing high-speed connectivity to European governments and citizens.

The Iris² multi-orbit constellation is Europe’s third major infrastructure project in space after the Galileo navigation system and Copernicus, the world’s largest Earth observation network. It was announced two years ago with the dual aim of providing sovereign, secure communication services to EU member states, while also reviving the bloc’s flagging space sector with a cutting-edge project.

Negotiations have been fraught, with disputes over the escalating cost and risk and how the work will be shared. On Monday, the European Commission put a €10.6bn price tag on the programme, with 61 per cent funded publicly and the balance coming from the SpaceRise industrial consortium, led by Eutelsat, Hispasat and SES. The project was initially estimated to cost roughly €6bn.

Timo Pesonen, the commission’s director-general for defence, industry and space, underlined the strategic importance for Europe of having its own space-based communication network. Autonomous and secure connectivity was “imperative” for the EU, he said.

“Iris² underpins our strategic autonomy and defence capacity, promotes our competitiveness, and energises public and private sectors co-operation,” he added.

SpaceRise, which includes European space and communications companies Airbus, Deutsche Telekom, Telespazio and Thales among others, will have a 12-year concession to design, build and operate Iris².

The project will place 290 satellites in low and medium Earth orbits, with a target to begin operations by early 2030. The majority of its capacity will be dedicated to a commercial broadband service offered by the satellite operators to businesses and households. But a substantial share will be dedicated to secure services supporting government applications, such as surveillance and crisis management.

Eutelsat, the highly leveraged French satellite operator which has been counting on Iris² to help fund the development of its next generation of OneWeb satellites, is investing €2bn into the project as the single biggest private-sector investor.

Eva Berneke, chief executive, said the investment was capped and would not be required until 2028, when production starts. Yet, OneWeb would be able to integrate technology developed for Iris² into its own new satellites earlier, she said.

“We get access, and maybe even faster access, to the technologies where the costs are being, to a very large extent, financed by public funds,” she said. 

The programme should offer a pipeline of contracts for Europe’s space industry, which has been struggling to adapt to a shift from large communications satellites in geostationary orbit some 36,000km above the earth to mega-constellations of smaller spacecraft in low Earth orbit — the region of space up to an altitude of 2,000km.

Thales and Airbus, Europe’s two biggest satellite manufacturers, have in recent months announced thousands of job cuts to address the decline of their traditional geostationary businesses.

In his report on European competitiveness published last September, former Italian premier Mario Draghi found that Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service, with more than 6,000 spacecraft delivering communications services to more than 100 countries, was “disrupting European telecom operators and manufacturers”.

Commercial and export sales in the sector had fallen to close to 2009 levels, and the EU was now lagging “behind the US in rocket propulsion and mega-constellations for telecom and satellite receivers and applications, a market much larger than the other space segments”, Draghi found.

Josef Aschbacher, director-general of the European Space Agency, said the programme would “foster innovation in the European space industry, boost European competitiveness [and] create jobs”.

There are also hopes that Iris² might help to heal some of the divisions threatening Franco-German collaboration as the EU attempts to introduce competition into the procurement of space launch and cargo services. Earlier this year, Germany voiced concerns about the cost and likely workshare in Iris², two people close to the subject confirmed to the Financial Times.

Philippe Baptiste, president of the French space agency CNES, insisted there was no guarantee that French companies would dominate the work on Iris², as the programme would not award contracts on the basis of any nation’s investment.

Instead, the satellite operators leading the consortium would be allowed to choose the most competitive suppliers. “I would be happy to have a heavy workload in France but there is no guarantee of that. If Thales or Airbus want a heavy share they have to be very good and very competitive,” he told the FT.

Baptiste said Iris² would boost European competitiveness: “We used to be clear leaders in Europe for space-based telecom. But right now the market is clearly shifting to LEO [low Earth orbit].

“It is important not only for the strategic agenda of Europe but also for the companies to gain leadership in technology. It has to be competitive,” he added.