WASHINGTON \u2014 OHB has won a contract worth more than a billion dollars to build the satellites for the medium Earth orbit, or MEO, shell of a European constellation.<\/p>\n
OHB announced Aug. 31 it signed a contract with satellite operator SES to build 18 satellites for the Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite, or IRIS\u00b2, constellation. The contract, OHB said, is worth nearly 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion).<\/p>\n
The satellites will comprise the MEO portion of the constellation, which also includes satellites in two low Earth orbit bands. SES, part of the SpaceRISE consortium developing the constellation for the European Commission, is responsible for the MEO shell as well as development of user terminals and creation of government control centers.<\/p>\n
The contract is the first for the constellation since SpaceRISE and the Commission completed a review Aug. 7 called Rendezvous 1<\/a>. The review resulted in adding 66 LEO satellites to IRIS\u00b2 and increasing its total cost by nearly 50% to 15.6 billion euros.<\/p>\n IRIS\u00b2 is designed to provide connectivity services for European governments as well as consumers and businesses. European officials have increasingly emphasized the need for a sovereign satellite communications system to reduce reliance on foreign systems, such as SpaceX\u2019s Starlink.<\/p>\n \u201cIRIS\u00b2 will mark another significant step toward Europe\u2019s independence. In an increasingly digital and highly mobile world, a resilient and autonomous communication infrastructure is indispensable,\u201d said Marco Fuchs, chief executive of OHB, in a statement. \u201cWe are especially pleased to have been entrusted with the development of 18 satellite platforms for IRIS\u00b2, further expanding our role in Europe\u2019s strategic space infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n The company said the 18 satellites it will develop will each weigh 2.6 tons and produce up to 15 kilowatts of power. Neither OHB nor SES disclosed details about the communications payloads they will carry. SES previously stated it would design and build those payloads.<\/p>\n SES is leading the MEO portion of IRIS\u00b2 based on its experience with its own MEO system, O3b. The current generation of the O3b constellation, called O3b mPower, uses satellites that provide multiple gigabits per second of capacity<\/a>. Those satellites, though, are built by Boeing, an American company that is likely ineligible for IRIS\u00b2 awards.<\/p>\n