SES Space and Defense has been awarded a contract of USD 14.5 million to support Thule Air Base in Greenland with critical communications capabilities.

The SES Space and Defense solution leverages C-band technology, which is highly resilient to weather effects and provides a dedicated reachback beam leveraging single hop connectivity directly to the user site. The SES Space and Defense solution also provides redundancy at all levels, to include antennas, uplink, and downlink telemetry, ground infrastructure, and restoration capabilities. This award is an example of the company’s proven track record of providing reliable services in harsh climate conditions in the Arctic, while ensuring the mitigation of physical antenna degradation.

“We are proud to provide satellite communications support for this critical mission,” said President and CEO of SES Space and Defense, Brigadier General Pete Hoene, USAF (retired). “Thule Air Base is the Department of Defense’s northernmost installation, and this program continues to serve as a great example of the importance of our capability to deliver the critical intelligence data to military decision-makers.”

SES Space and Defense has been the sole provider of commercial satellite communications to Thule Air Base for over 20 years. It has extensive experience overcoming the challenging conditions of operating in Arctic locations, including the extreme cold-weather environment, unpredictable weather patterns, near-horizon location, and logistical challenges.

SES operates the world’s only global satellite fleet of both geostationary and non-geostationary (NGSO) satellites, with expanded capabilities to be deployed in 2022 with the upcoming launch of the next-generation O3b mPOWER constellation.

SES combines its operational experience with its GEO and NGSO global capabilities to deliver multi-band, multi-orbit communications to customers’ remote locations like Thule, where resilience and reliability are non-negotiable.