Contained within the small print of an August 7th announcement covering the massive IRIS2 ‘super-constellation’ of satellites are some key details. The project is budgeted at some €15.6 billion and will comprise 348 new satellites. The original budget, estimated in December 2024, was for about €10.5 billion-€11 billion.

It has also emerged that Eutelsat is significantly upping its contribution to the scheme, while SES is reducing its payment. The news did no favours for Eutelsat’s share price on Friday August 7th. Its shares fell dramatically from €2.14 to – at one point – just €1.92 before closing the day at €2.05.

It seems the market wasn’t impressed by Eutelsat’s results which despite revenue for the full year of €1.236 billion it still ended up reporting a loss of €457 million. And – again – no mention of a return to a dividend for long-suffering shareholders.

As for IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellites) Belgium’s AerospaceLab, based in Charleroi, will be a major contributor to the build of satellites along with Airbus and Thales. “By design, the programme will also generate opportunities for start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises and mid-caps developing innovative space technologies,” stated the European Space Agency (ESA).

The European Commission statement says that the project will expand by 66 satellites (to a total of 330 in LEO) plus the 18 craft in medium Earth orbit.

These 66 new LEO satellites will be governmental/military-Ka-band only, not a Ku- military-Ka-band combination as the rest of the constellation and will be dedicated to military/security demand and will “strengthen capabilities for defense, security and emergency services, further enhancing its architecture,” the Commission said. They will be among the first to launch, in 2029.

This expansion of the project means extra funding and the budget will expand, but the amount has not been specified. “Funding will come from a combination of EU budget resources for 2028–2034 and additional investments from Member States and third countries,” stated the Commission.

“This reinforcement will increase secure governmental capacity by 60 per cent within the EU and 54 per cent globally, while significantly expanding Europe’s ability to support critical missions during crises…. European manufacturers have committed to delivering the additional satellites, designed with enhanced resilience. Concrete next steps are now in place to achieve first launches by 2029.”

The post-announcement comments confirms that the non-military capacity will provide commercial revenues to the SpaceRISE consortium. SES, for example, has stressed in the past that its participation depended on IRIS2 delivering a financial Rate of Return that was commensurate with its commercial operations. “The Internal Rate Return (IRR) of the contract is expected to meet SES’s minimum 10 percent hurdle rate,” stated SES.

Indeed, SES in a comment after the announcement said that its contribution had been reduced from €1.8 billion to a maximum of €1.35 billion. “No future exceptional cash proceeds will be used to fund the project,” stated SES. SES will be responsible for the 18 MEO satellites and reports suggest that OHB of Germany will build the MEO craft.

“Approximately 90 percent of MEO capacity is expected to remain commercially exploitable by SES, generating significant long-term revenue opportunities across government, mobility, enterprise and cloud connectivity markets over the lifetime of these satellites,” said SES.

Meanwhile, Eutelsat has boosted its investment into the project. Eutelsat says its investment in the shared IRIS2 infrastructure would be €2.23 billion, and another €1.16 billion for the commercial segment, covering the Ku-band payload and the commercial element of the IRIS2 ground segment (and a total of some €3.39 billion). The Eutelsat investment will take place between 2027 and 2034. This total is considerably greater than the €2 billion stated by Eutelsat to be its contribution in December 2024.

Eutelsat believes that revenues likely to flow from the IRIS2 LEO capacity is estimated at more than €10 billion between 2032 and 2040.

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Tags: eutelsat, iris2, spacerise