IRIS2: everything you need to know about this new European constellation

After Galileo and Coper­ni­cus, Europe will deploy the IRIS² (Infra­struc­ture for Resilience, Inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty and Secu­ri­ty by Satel­lite) con­stel­la­tion of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites in 2030. Jean-Pierre Diris, inter­de­part­men­tal coor­di­na­tor for IRIS², explains the issues at stake in this new project sup­port­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and the under­ly­ing tech­no­log­i­cal challenges.

Jean-Pierre Diris. The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of our soci­eties is lead­ing to an explo­sion in demand for con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Until recent­ly, space-based con­nec­tiv­i­ty was less effi­cient and more expen­sive than ter­res­tri­al tech­nolo­gies. But advances in elec­tron­ic minia­tur­i­sa­tion, the intro­duc­tion of reusable launch­ers and the deploy­ment of indus­tri­al capac­i­ty to mass-pro­duce satel­lites have made pos­si­ble the advent of ‘mega con­stel­la­tions’, which are set to rev­o­lu­tionise the mar­ket and usage patterns.

To avoid depend­ing on non-Euro­pean play­ers for its strate­gic, mil­i­tary and gov­ern­men­tal needs, Europe has decid­ed to devel­op its own con­stel­la­tion. IRIS² will pro­vide secure con­nec­tiv­i­ty for our embassies, our armed forces in the­atres of oper­a­tion and our gov­ern­ment ser­vices in the event of envi­ron­men­tal crises, even when ter­res­tri­al tech­nolo­gies are absent or unavail­able. At the same time, it will pro­vide a com­pet­i­tive com­mer­cial service.

IRIS² will have 264 satel­lites in low Earth orbit (LEO), at an alti­tude of 1,200 km, and 18 satel­lites in medi­um Earth orbit (MEO), at an alti­tude of 8,000 km. By way of com­par­i­son, Star­link already has 7,000 satel­lites and plans to deploy a total of 42,000 in low Earth orbit. Ama­zon is about to launch the first satel­lites of the Kuiper con­stel­la­tion, which is expect­ed to have 3,200 satel­lites. The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has also begun deploy­ing Guowang (‘nation­al net­work’ in Chi­nese) at the end of 2024, which will com­prise 13,000 satel­lites, and oth­er projects of this scale, backed by pri­vate inter­ests, are being devel­oped in the coun­try. So, IRIS² is not a mega-con­stel­la­tion, and unlike Star­link or Kuiper, its pur­pose is not pure­ly commercial.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion launched IRIS² in 2022 and its reg­u­la­tion was val­i­dat­ed at Euro­pean lev­el in March 2023. On 16^th Decem­ber last year, a deci­sive step was tak­en with the sign­ing of a 12-year con­ces­sion con­tract with the Spac­eRISE indus­tri­al con­sor­tium formed by three oper­a­tors: Eutel­sat, SES and Spain’s His­pasat. Between 2023 and 2024, the dis­cus­sions between the 27 Mem­ber States were indeed intense, and Ger­many expressed some mis­giv­ings. But I think I can say that we have turned the page on these difficulties.

The con­ces­sion con­tract is worth €10.6bn, with 60% com­ing from Euro­pean pub­lic funds and the remain­ing 40% from the three mem­bers of the con­sor­tium. This pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship struc­ture is a first in the Euro­pean space sec­tor for a project of this scale. Of course, this means that the com­mer­cial ser­vices deliv­ered by IRIS² must be prof­itable, and there­fore high­ly com­pet­i­tive, which Europe knows it can con­trol. And while Thalès and Air­bus are no longer part of Spac­eRISE, they remain priv­i­leged partners.

The cen­tral issue is secu­ri­ty, which con­cerns both the com­mand and con­trol of the satel­lites and all the com­mu­ni­ca­tions car­ried by the net­work. This will be based in par­tic­u­lar on inter-satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tion using high-speed laser trans­mis­sion. Data will be sent to just five points of pres­ence on the ground, all locat­ed in Europe. This con­fig­u­ra­tion will avoid depen­dence on an uncon­trolled ter­res­tri­al infrastructure.

IRIS² will also enable a tech­no­log­i­cal leap for­ward in terms of elec­tron­ic minia­tur­i­sa­tion. Oper­a­tors have opt­ed to work to 5G stan­dards in order to pro­vide a seam­less com­mer­cial offer­ing between ter­res­tri­al and space sys­tems. The satel­lites, which are high­ly digi­tised, will also be ful­ly repro­gram­ma­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the event of a switch to 6G. These fea­tures will be based on high­ly inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, with etch­ings typ­i­cal­ly reach­ing 7nm, some­thing that has not yet been done in Europe.

In fact, Europe is very well placed in this com­pe­ti­tion for fre­quen­cy bands. IRIS² will extend two exist­ing con­stel­la­tions: OneWeb, orig­i­nal­ly an Amer­i­can net­work, was acquired by France’s Eutel­sat in Sep­tem­ber 2023, and O3b mPOW­ER, oper­at­ed by Luxembourg’s SES. For its com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions, it will there­fore ben­e­fit from their reserved fre­quen­cy rights, which have an excel­lent lev­el of pri­or­i­ty (OneWeb, in par­tic­u­lar, has pri­or­i­ty over Star­link in low-Earth orbit). Gov­ern­ment appli­ca­tions, on the oth­er hand, rely on a spe­cif­ic fre­quen­cy range, the mil­i­tary Ka-band: France and Europe reg­is­tered fre­quen­cy rights for this range very ear­ly on, and as a result have quite remark­able pri­or­i­ty rights.

The con­sor­tium plans to devel­op non-emis­sive satel­lites so as not to dis­rupt astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­tions. The pro­duc­tion of debris in orbit comes essen­tial­ly from acci­den­tal col­li­sions, which must be avoid­ed at all costs because the pres­ence of debris leads to expo­nen­tial degra­da­tion of objects in orbit. This requires satel­lite com­mand and con­trol, and Europe has a great deal of expe­ri­ence in this area. On the oth­er hand, there is some con­cern about the lev­el of con­trol exer­cised by the new play­ers. We know, for exam­ple, that SpaceX very often manoeu­vres its satel­lites to avoid col­li­sions, and that more than 400 of them are cur­rent­ly out of order, which is quite worrying.

Nat­u­ral­ly, we are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing research on this sub­ject, but we have to admit that there is still no con­sol­i­dat­ed view of the var­i­ous risks caused by the dis­in­te­gra­tion of a large num­ber of satel­lites in the atmos­phere. In any case, it should be remem­bered that Europe, with IRIS², has opt­ed for a very sus­tain­able mod­el: few­er than 300 objects, each with a lifes­pan of ten years. Here again, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mega-con­stel­la­tions pos­es a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent prob­lem: with sev­er­al tens of thou­sands of satel­lites with at least half the lifes­pan, the risks, what­ev­er they may be, will increase considerably.

Space has nev­er been so high on the Amer­i­can agen­da and it’s hap­pen­ing in a very unex­pect­ed way… There is now a strong Amer­i­can desire to gain an eco­nom­ic foothold in Europe, as under­lined by the part­ner­ships that SpaceX is try­ing to forge with Italy and Ger­many. At the same time, the new Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent has made it very clear that Europe will have to learn to stand on its own two feet when it comes to defence. This com­bi­na­tion of wills rein­forces our posi­tion: we can­not be sub­ject to per­ma­nent changes of direc­tion for our crit­i­cal uses, or be depen­dent on eco­nom­i­cal­ly aggres­sive play­ers. Europe needs its strate­gic auton­o­my more than ever.

Interview by Anne Orliac