The Commission intends the constellation to start offering services by 2030 to cover Europe and the whole of Africa, and to boost communications diversity and resilience
Europe has kicked off its biggest space project for a decade or more with a €10.6 billion deal to build a multi-orbit satellite constellation. The Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) is intended to offer an alternative to Elon Musk’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) Starlink.
It will provide fast connectivity to places that have no network coverage otherwise in Europe and across the whole of Africa, using the constellation’s North-South orbits. It will also supplement other kinds of connectivity and improve the diversity of communication routes in the interests of resilience: submarine cables are targets for terrorists and state-sponsored sabotage.
This is why Europe wants its own space infrastructure, for security and resilience, rather than at the whim of a billionaire owner.
The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) says that IRIS² “will put an end to dead zones in Europe as well as the whole of Africa through a resilient and ultra-secure space and ground-based system.”
Public funds will cough up €6.5 billion, which includes €550 million from the European Space Agency’s Partnership Projects. The rest – more than €4 billion – is to come from private industry.
The ESA says the constellation will have about 300 satellites, both LEO and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). The idea is to leverage the strengths of both: the former has lower latency, being closer to the Earth, and MEOs provide greater coverage. SpaceX’s Starlink is addressing coverage by launching thousands of LEO satellites.
The consortium
The SpaceRISE consortium is responsible for putting the plan into action and is led by Eutelsat, Hispasat and SES. Other members include Airbus, Deutsche Telekom, Telespazio and Thales. The consortium says it expects to begin services in 2030 – around halfway through the 12-year IRIS² contract.
EUSPA also says in a statement: “Relying on quantum cryptography through the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI), and enhanced cybersecurity through a secure-by-design approach for the infrastructure, the system will bring an unprecedented security level to its users
“EUSPA is already actively involved in building secure satellite communication infrastructure for Europe through the coordination of the first phase of GOVSATCOM [Governmental Satellite Communications] on which IRIS² will be based.”
The European Union has long harboured ambitions to build its own communications satellite constellation and originally the estimated cost was €6 billion. Plans that involve many parties tend to take an unconscionably long time, however, and this has been no exception. And perhaps even now, some issues remain.
From next year, the consortium intends to start by using member states’ existing satellite capacity, although details remain vague: for example, Eutelsat merged with OneWeb in 2022. OneWeb operates a broadband satellite constellation of more than 630 units.