A bunch of Europe’s major space and telecommunications players will bid for a proposed satellite constellation that might compete with SpaceX’s Starlink system.
Corporations including Airbus Defense and Space, Eutelsat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space announced that they’ve formed a partnership to reply to the European Commission’s call for assistance in making a future European satellite constellation.
Announced in late 2022, the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity, and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) constellation will provide the European Union with web connectivity from low-Earth orbit, a service much like that offered by the ever-growing constellation of Starlink satellites operated by SpaceX.
Ars Technica reported (opens in latest tab) this week that current EU estimates put the fee of Iris² at around $6.6 billion USD (6 billion Euro). The EU hopes the proposed constellation could possibly be operational by 2027.
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The European Union (EU) will provide $2.64 billion USD (2.4 billion Euros) to the project with additional funding set to return from the European Space Agency and personal investment.
“IRIS² establishes space as a vector of our European autonomy, a vector of connectivity and a vector of resilience,” Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union Thierry Breton wrote in a statement last Nov. (opens in latest tab) “It heightens Europe’s role as a real space power. With a transparent ambition and sense of direction.”
The partnership also includes communications giants Deutsche Telekom, Hispasat, OHB, Orange, Hisdesat and Telespazio, who’ve said that the proposed megaconstellation will encourage startups within the European space sector to hitch the coalition. This meets the needs of Breton, who has expressed his desire to broaden the European business space sector, hoping start-ups will construct 30% of the Iris² infrastructure.
Named after the figure from Greek mythology said to be the messenger of the gods to humans, the Iris satellite constellation will provide connectivity for the entire of Europe, including areas currently not supplied by broadband Web. Along with this, Breton said in his Nov. 2022 statement that IRIS² may also provide connectivity to the entire of Africa, using the satellites’ North-South orbits.
The system will integrate with Europe’s existing satellite constellations including Galileo, the region’s global satellite navigation system consisting of 24 spacecraft at Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and the dual Earth commentary satellites Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B that comprise the Copernicus system. Breton said that the aim of this coordination between what he describes as Europe’s “three pillars” in space is to scale back the danger of space congestion.
But, Iris² has a protracted technique to go before it catches up with Starlink.
SpaceX launched the primary two prototype satellites of its satellite constellation, Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in February 2018. In accordance with astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, the megaconstellation currently boasts over 4,300 spacecraft (opens in latest tab), most of that are operational.
SpaceX has plans to eventually send as many as 12,000 satellites to low Earth orbit as a part of the Starlink megaconstellation which currently supplies web to 53 countries, with the corporate estimating in 2018 this could cost around $10 billion USD (9 billion Euro). This population of satellites could eventually swell to 42,000 units, nevertheless; SpaceX has applied for approval for an additional 30,000.
The Starlink system has been controversial since its inception with astronomers, specifically, fearing that its size and scale could interfere with observations of the celebrities and other celestial bodies created from Earth. Spaceflight safety experts now consider Starlink because the primary risk of collision hazards in Earth’s orbit.
Other scientists fear that as disused Starlink satellites, which have a lifetime of around five years, are deorbited metal burning up within the atmosphere could cause unpredictable changes in Earth’s climate.