Advanced Television

IRIS2 is “dead in the water”

May 29, 2025

The SmallSat Europe conference at the RAI Congress Centre in Amsterdam heard speaker after speaker express anxiety over the planned European IRIS2 mega-constellation. The project, which will eventually bring together low Earth orbit, mid-Earth and geostationary satellites in a global ring of craft with ultra-secure communications, is looking extremely fragile if the event’s speakers are any guide.

One speaker, Sven Meyer-Brunswick, a principal at Alpine Space Ventures, bluntly told delegates that the project “is dead in the water”.

“It is a non-competitive programme that should have been started differently. We need to look at the US and the Space Development Agency [SDA] and what they’re doing, cost effectively, multiple tranches with multiple suppliers. This is what should have happened with IRIS2, but didn’t. The end user was never asked about his needs,” added Meyer-Brunswick.

Another, Daniel Biedermann, a partner at NewSpace Capital, said of IRIS2: “It needs to have a business case that is workable and I don’t think it does. Until there is a different proposition on the table I can’t see how an investor would commit to it. This is a sovereign network, which means profitability may not be a priority.”

The project has its organisational members in the form of the SpaceRISE consortium, comprising SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat. But key European member states such as Italy and Germany are proceeding with their own systems.

The SmallSat event did hear from supporters, but even the likes of Stephane Israel, a partner at Boston Consulting and previously CEO at Arianespace, expressed concerns, saying there were still challenges for the project, not least solving the interoperability between the LEO, MEO and GEO elements.

“Then there is the challenge of cost,” Israel added. “There is a gap between what is acknowledged by SpaceRise and the costs coming from industry. This is estimated at approximately €1 billion. It needs to be filled and to converge with industry.”

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