Buses from Bremen, Payloads in Luxembourg: How SES Split the IRIS² MEO Layer

OHB has been awarded a contract worth nearly €1 billion by SES to develop and build all eighteen satellite platforms for the medium Earth orbit segment of IRIS², the European Union's secure connectivity constellation. OHB announced the award from Bremen on 31 August and describes it as the first major contract awarded under the IRIS² concession since the programme entered its implementation phase in August.

Each of the eighteen completed satellites, platform and payload together, is to have a launch mass of about 2.6 tonnes and a maximum power of around 15 kilowatts. The first IRIS² satellites are expected to launch in 2029, according to OHB and the European Commission, with initial services in 2030.

What was bought, and what was kept

OHB's release says the company will develop and build the satellite platforms, the bus that carries power, propulsion, structure and control. It is a platform release rather than a description of the whole satellite: it does not name the communications payloads or who assembles the finished satellites. SES's statement in the same release, from its Chief Product and Innovation Officer Xavier Bertran, describes SES as the company responsible for the delivery of the IRIS² MEO segment within SpaceRISE.

The answer to what the OHB release leaves out is in SES's own release of 7 August. Announcing the completion of Rendez-vous 1, the milestone at which the European Commission, the SES-led SpaceRISE consortium and ESA validated programme costs, technical requirements, delivery timelines and industrial arrangements, SES stated that it will design and build the payloads for the MEO satellites and perform satellite assembly, integration and test from its facilities in Luxembourg. In the same release it put its expected capital commitment for the MEO segment at up to €1.35 billion, reflecting current programme scope, for eighteen satellites and a targeted service entry in 2030.

Read together, the two releases describe the whole satellite. The bus comes from OHB in Bremen under a contract worth nearly €1 billion. The payload is designed and built by SES, and the satellite is assembled, integrated and tested by SES, in Luxembourg.

Two figures, three weeks apart

The €1.35 billion and the nearly €1 billion describe two different things, an envelope and a contract, and neither company says that one sits inside the other. What the pair does show is where the external industrial spend disclosed so far on the MEO satellites has gone: to the platform supplier. On SES's own statement, the payload and integration work stays with SES rather than going to a third party.

Where this sits in the programme

IRIS² is planned at 348 satellites, 330 in higher low Earth orbit and 18 in medium Earth orbit. Per European Spaceflight's account of the 7 August implementation agreement, planned investment now exceeds €15.6 billion, of which up to €4 billion comes from the SpaceRISE operators and €11.6 billion from public funding provided by the European Commission and ESA. The Commission's own 7 August release carries the satellite counts and the 2029 first-launch date; the funding split is European Spaceflight's.

SpaceRISE is SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat. The LEO satellites are Eutelsat's side of the constellation; Hispasat was named prime for the ground segment at over €1.6 billion, per Indra Group's 7 August release (W36 Space Insights coverage).

The MEO layer is SES's part, and SES already operates a commercial constellation in medium Earth orbit. Boeing built the O3b mPOWER satellites and delivered the final three on 2 September, completing the initial thirteen-satellite constellation ahead of a launch from Florida planned for September, per Boeing's own release. For that constellation SES bought complete satellites from a manufacturer. For IRIS² it is buying the bus and building the payload.

The Space Insights read

The reading that follows is ours. Neither OHB nor SES characterises the pair of releases beyond its own terms.

The industrial shape of the MEO satellites is now visible in both halves, along a line the two releases draw between them: platform work to a German supplier, payload and integration in-house at the operator in Luxembourg. For an operator that has so far bought its MEO satellites whole, taking on payload design, manufacture and satellite integration is a change of role, and the €1.35 billion commitment is the first figure attached to it. What SES's release does not describe is the capacity behind that role, how many satellites a year its Luxembourg facilities can assemble and test, and that is the number the 2029 and 2030 dates would be measured against.

There is a second, quieter observation. Two of the three companies that signed European Launcher Challenge contracts on 27 August are funded principally by Germany (W36 Space Insights coverage; primary source ESA's 27 August European Launcher Challenge release). The IRIS² MEO bus is now German too. That pairing is a Space Insights reading of where European institutional space money landed in the last week of August; the two programmes are separately governed and neither ESA nor SES connects them.

What to watch

Three things follow from this pair of releases. Eutelsat's awards for the 330 LEO satellites, not yet public, which would show whether the LEO layer follows the same split. Any detail from SES on payload production and on assembly, integration and test in Luxembourg, which its 7 August release does not give. And the two dates that now sit side by side: first IRIS² launches in 2029 according to OHB and the Commission, and a service entry in 2030 that is the only date SES's own release names.