Announced at the International Space Summit in Paris, the order will replace ageing OneWeb satellites and extend a European satellite-manufacturing programme WAN has been following through the week’s Space Summit coverage.
EUTELSAT EXTENDS ONEWEB REPLENISHMENT WITH 229-SATELLITE AIRBUS ORDER
Eutelsat has signed an Authorisation to Proceed with Airbus Defence and Space covering initial industrial activities for 229 additional OneWeb satellites, announced during the International Space Summit in Paris and in the presence of French higher education, research and space minister Philippe Baptiste. The satellites come on top of 440 already procured from Airbus and due for delivery and launch soon, bringing the total new OneWeb satellites built by Airbus to 669. All will be manufactured at Airbus Defence and Space’s Toulouse facility, which is already producing the earlier batches.
REPLACING AN AGEING CONSTELLATION
Eutelsat’s OneWeb network currently operates more than 600 low Earth orbit satellites across 12 synchronised orbital planes at around 1,200km altitude, providing high-speed, low-latency broadband globally. The new satellites are intended to progressively replace early batches nearing the end of their operational life while carrying improvements developed through the programme, including more advanced digital channelisers for onboard processing and the capacity to carry hosted payloads alongside the core OneWeb Ku-band mission. “This is an exciting next step for OneWeb and for Eutelsat’s LEO strategy. With the first satellites from the 440 due for delivery and launch soon, our replenishment programme is moving forward. The planned addition of 229 more satellites will further strengthen OneWeb, while IRIS² will bring significant new capacity and capabilities. Together, they give us a powerful roadmap to serve our customers, grow our LEO business and reinforce our role at the heart of Europe’s sovereign connectivity future,” said Jean-François Fallacher, Eutelsat Chief Executive Officer.
A STATEMENT ON EUROPEAN MANUFACTURING CAPACITY
Alain Fauré, Head of Space Systems in Airbus Defence and Space, framed the order as evidence of Airbus’s production scale: “This new contract from Eutelsat highlights the maturity of our product, the excellence of our supply chain and their trust in our industrial know-how for high rate satellite manufacturing for large-scale LEO constellations. This is also a further step for European sovereignty, for which Airbus and Eutelsat have been key partners for decades.”
Source and Images: Airbus
