The nature of the public-private partnership will effectively see the EU and European Space Agency (ESA) committing government funds towards expanding existing MEO and LEO constellations. The resulting satellites will comprise a new satellite network called Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²), which will provide essential satellite communications services for the EU government and militaries, while also giving the partner companies additional satellite capacity that can be leased to allied nations and commercial customers.

This connectivity will also be assured and secured by its multi-orbit nature. By leveraging both LEO satellites and MEO satellites, the IRIS² constellation will be more difficult for adversaries to target. It will also enable the EU to enjoy the resiliency benefits inherent provided by two different orbits.

But why is the EU building its own sovereign satellite service at a time when commercial investment is increasing, and are there more commercial satellite capacity and constellations available for use than ever before? One only has to look at what’s happening in Ukraine to understand why this capability is now essential and no longer a “nice to have.”

In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some of the first casualties were the terrestrial networks that connected Ukrainians and enabled critical communications. The adversary understood the role that communications play in a coordinated defense and almost immediately eliminated this essential infrastructure. This left Ukraine looking to satellite communications from companies like SpaceX to deliver mission-critical communications.

The EU has seen the importance of assured SATCOM for defense and national security. They also see its potential for delivering connectivity to rural and remote areas – making IRIS² an important investment for Europe’s future. However, IRIS² will do more than provide critical connectivity for the EU. It will also usher in a new era of MEO satellite capability that offers connectivity anywhere on the globe and brings some of the most exciting technological advancements to MEO.

Inclined, optical, and new era for MEO
Part of building out IRIS² includes the development and launch of 18 new MEO satellites. These satellites will be in inclined orbits, specifically to offer high throughput, low-latency connectivity to the regions that could not be serviced by existing SES MEO satellites in an equatorial orbit.

Most communications satellites in GEO and MEO orbit above the Earth’s equator. This optimizes the satellite coverage over populated areas of the Earth but limits the coverage in higher latitude regions. By launching MEO satellites into inclined orbit, SES and the EU will effectively enable the IRIS² constellation to provide global service – enabling better and more complete access for EU nations including delivery of critical high throughput, low latency services to the polar regions, which are becoming increasingly more trafficked and contested due to a variety of factors including climate change and resulting resource competition.

However, connectivity to the polar region is just one advancement that will be evident in IRIS². The IRIS² MEO architecture will feature optical intersatellite links that will enable rapid communication between satellites and provide users much more flexibility on where to land their data.

Optical communications between satellites has been explored heavily by LEO satellite operators for use in their constellations – and for very good reason. By enabling satellites to relay data between themselves in the vacuum of space, satellites can more rapidly and effectively get data to its final destination on Earth. Enabling this capability on IRIS² MEO satellites will enable more seamless communications between even the most distant places on Earth.

While IRIS² will result in new satellites being added to the existing MEO constellation operated by SES, these satellites are not the only ones SES plans to add. The IRIS² satellites will be joined by other new satellites that SES will procure and launch into MEO as part of its next-generation MEO satellite constellation. The rapid increase in new satellites in MEO provides a myriad of new opportunities for global governments, and opens the door for new, innovative capabilities in space through the use of hosted payloads and secondary missions.

These payloads could include scientific missions, Earth observation missions, or could bring advanced communications, sensor, computing capabilities into space – including artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing capabilities.

The IRIS² sovereign satellite initiative will bring secure, assured, and reliable satellite connectivity to the EU when it enters operation in 2030. But it will also usher in a new and exciting era for MEO satellite constellations. The investment in IRIS2 is sparking the further advancement of communications satellites in MEO, and it will result in MEO capacity extending to practically every corner of the globe and the introduction of exciting new capabilities to MEO satellite networks.

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That might now seem like a particularly interesting or insightful thing to say. It could come off as simple pandering to a room full of satellite professionals. But it’s quite true and becoming increasingly obvious to even the casual observer. At a time when space exploration and advancements in space and satellite technology are no longer dominating the news or making headlines, we’ve quietly seen a huge resurgence in both interest and investment in space.

That interest isn’t just on behalf of the federal government, either. A new generation of satellites and new satellite technologies are opening the door for satellite to deliver the IT services that many with high speed broadband connections take for granted to every corner of the globe. Advances in technology and robotics are also creating smaller, cheaper satellites and even satellites that can service and refuel other satellites. All the while, the emergence of new companies in the commercial launch space is making access to space cheaper.

The industry is rapidly evolving, and that change is generating a lot of excitement across the government, military and the industry itself. We’re excited to document these changes and chronicle where the industry goes next.

Here are some of the most interesting satellite articles that we saw in the past few weeks, which prove that satellite is one of the busiest and most interesting industries today:

US Air Force to put sensors on allies’ satellites
Every government-focused satellite conference or event that we  attend eventually hits on the topic of mission assurance in space and defending our satellite infrastructure. It’s become an essential topic and major challenge for our military as adversaries have grown increasingly capable of denying satellite communications and capabilities, and our warfighters have grown ever more reliant on IT-enabled tools and services.

This article in Defense One discusses steps that our military is taking to help ensure mission assurance in space, and it’s something that we’ve discussed frequently in the past on the Government Satellite Report – hosted payloads.

We’ve speculated in the past that putting military payloads on other satellites – including commercial satellites – could make it harder for adversaries to target and deny satellite capabilities, and that’s exactly what the military is looking to do. However, instead of just using commercial satellites, they’re placing sensors on satellites belonging to our allies.

This is an exciting step that – if proven useful – could expand to the military placing sensors and transponders on commercial satellites with increased frequency in the future. The benefit would be an integrated satellite architecture of commercial, allied and military-owned satellites that would be almost impossible to fully compromise and that could very quickly fill military satellite requirements should a military satellite be denied.

ESA and SES-led consortium to develop satellite-based cybersecurity
The military has other concerns about the safety and security of satellites and satellite communications aside from the jamming of satellites or adversaries shooting them down. One of those concerns involves cybersecurity and satellite signals being intercepted or altered.

You could imagine the chaos and problems that could emerge for U.S. soldiers if they received inaccurate information via satellite from one of our adversaries, or if their locations or other sensitive information was intercepted. This is the reality that the military is looking to avoid.

Well, the European Space Agency (ESA) and a consortium of satellite providers and satellite technology companies are now teaming up in an effort to increase the security of satellites and satellite communications. The consortium, which is being led by satellite communications provider, SES, will seek to develop, “a system that will allow the generation of encryption keys from space, as well as their secure transmission to users on Earth via laser.”

The system has been named the Quantum Cryptography Telecommunication System (QUARTZ), and it is intended to be, “a new platform aimed at providing a global service for next-generation encryption keys for use in geographically dispersed networks. “

Defense Department turning over space traffic management to Commerce, but details still unclear
All of that excitement and new activity in space that we mentioned before comes with a price. There are 1,500 active satellites in orbit already, and there are new satellite companies out there proposing to launch constellations that will add thousands more across multiple orbits.

Every one of those new satellites creates a new challenge for the folks that work to ensure that satellites don’t hit each other and that traffic and congestion in space doesn’t result in the same kind of calamities as traffic and congestion on our roads and highways.

To this end, the DoD has announced that it will be turning over the management of space traffic to an unlikely new ally, the Department of Commerce. Details on the transition remain somewhat unclear and it’s not entirely known how and when the transition will be completed, but it’s a move that many in the industry are considering a positive step forward that will help encourage continued private investment in space.

As Doug Loverro, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy told SpaceNews. “The good news is that several years ago this same committee was clearly against DoD ever losing control of this vital function. So I would say that this represents true progress in moving this inherently civil function to a civil agency.”

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