Germany’s aerospace company OHB awarded $1.16 billion contract to build 18 IRIS2 satellites
This label would be more accurate if it read
“made for too much and too slowly, for no
profits, in the European Union”
The Luxembourg satellite company SES has awarded the Germany aerospace company OHB a $1.16 billion contract to build 18 satellites for the European Union’s (EU) IRIS-2 satellite constellation, intended as a competitor to the private commercial internet constellations such as Starlink, OneWeb, and Leo.
OHB said the satellites will have a power output of approximately 15 kilowatts and a launch mass of about 2.6 metric tons. The launch of the first satellites is planned for 2029, with initial services expected to become available in 2030.
IRIS² is planned to be Europe’s third flagship space program after Galileo and Copernicus, with 348 satellites total in MEO and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to provide secure connectivity services to the EU and its member states, along with broadband connectivity.
The constellation is an EU-owned project, similar to its Galileo GPS-type and its Copernicus Earth observation constellations. Rather than allow private companies to compete to build such constellations, as is now done in the U.S., Europe hires private companies to build the satellites for the government. And like all such government-designed, government-owned, and government-run projects, they all tend to take longer and cost more than private projects. By the time IRIS-2 becomes fully functional in the early ’30s, it will be woefully obsolete. And it will have cost Europe far more than it should have.
Even more absurd, it will not be making anyone any money.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The pace of these programs reminds me of the old fake commercial that the comedy team of Bob and Ray used to inject into some of their skits, “Einbinder flypaper! The flypaper you’ve gradually come to know and love over the course of three generations!”
One wonders why the EU is even bothering with IRIS2. 2.6 metric tons is at least twice the mass of a Starlink V3 bird. Even an Ariane 64 isn’t going to be able to put up more than seven or eight of those at a time. Putting up 348 will require 40 – 50 Ariane 64 launches. That could easily take a decade.
The power seems a bit on the mingy side too, unless that 15 Kw figure is for radiated RF energy. But satellite power figures are usually given in terms of the power generated from its solar arrays. If that’s the case here, 15 Kw is pretty anemic. A Starlink V3 bird has 250 square meters of solar arrays. Assuming a 25% conversion efficiency by the solar cells, that’s enough surface area to generate 85 Kw.