![\"Spanish](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Hisdesat-Confirms-Spanish-Military-Satellite-Sustained-Non-Recoverable-Damage.webp.webp\")
Credit: Airbus Defence and Space<\/p>\n Credit: Airbus Defence and Space<\/p>\n
Hisdesat has announced that the SpainSat NG II military communications satellite, which was struck by a \u201cspace particle,\u201d has suffered \u201cnon-recoverable damage.\u201d As a result of this finding, the company has initiated an RFQ (request for quotation) for a replacement satellite, designated SpainSat NG III.<\/p>\n
The SpainSat NG II satellite was launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in October 2025 and is one of a pair built by Airbus to provide secure communications for the Spanish Armed Forces. The satellite is operated by Hisdesat on behalf of the country\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n
On 16 January, Hisdesat said that although the space particle that struck the satellite was estimated to have been only millimetres in size and to have weighed a few grams, its very high velocity and the location of the impact caused non-recoverable damage. The company said that, due to its highly eccentric orbit, the satellite does not pose \u201cany risk or interference to existing or future space missions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hisdesat added that because it was \u201cfully insured against this type of incident,\u201d the incident would \u201cnot result in economic damage.\u201d While the loss may not affect the company\u2019s balance sheet directly, as a 2019 Reuters report noted<\/a>, large claims like this can lead to higher insurance premiums. While the cost of each satellite has not been made public, Invest in Spain, the country\u2019s official foreign investment promotion agency, has confirmed<\/a> that the total cost of the SpainSat NG programme is around \u20ac2 billion. As a result, the claim, which is likely to be in the hundreds of millions, will almost certainly have an impact on future insurance costs.<\/p>\n Airbus announced that it had secured the contract to build the first two SpainSat NG satellites in May 2019. The first of the pair, SpainSat NG I, was launched in January 2025, more than five years after the contract was awarded. Based on that timeline, a replacement for SpainSat NG II may not be delivered and launched until around 2030. In the meantime, Hisdesat has said it would continue to provide Spain\u2019s armed forces with secure communications services using SpainSat NG I and the original SpainSat satellite, which was launched aboard an Ariane 5 in 2006 and is almost 20 years into its originally planned 15-year design life.<\/p>\n Keep European Spaceflight Independent<\/p>\n Your donation will help European Spaceflight to continue digging into the stories others miss. Every euro keeps our reporting alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Airbus Defence and Space Hisdesat has announced that the SpainSat NG II military communications satellite, which was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[19196,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-704222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-hisdesat","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115916133135043343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}