Europe’s Major Satellite Players Line Up to Build Starlink Competitor

upstart writes:

The bid includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, and SES:

A consortium of nearly every major European satellite company announced Tuesday that it plans to bid for a proposed satellite constellation to provide global communications. Essentially, such a constellation would provide the European Union with connectivity from low-Earth orbit similar to what SpaceX's Starlink offers.

The bid, which includes large players such as Airbus Defence and Space, Eutelsat, SES, and Thales Alenia Space, comes in response to a request by the European Union for help in constructing a sovereign constellation to provide secure communications for government services, including military applications.

[...] At present, Europe estimates the cost of this constellation at about 6 billion euro and desires it to be ready to provide global coverage by the year 2027. Both the budget and the timeline for this project are likely very ambitious, given the amount of coordination needed and the unlikelihood that Europe's Ariane 6 rocket will have the spare launch capacity to get hundreds of satellites into low-Earth orbit starting in the mid-2020s. The Ariane 6 rocket will not debut until 2024 at the earliest.

However, European officials felt as though they had to make this move. Fundamentally, the continent faced a difficult choice. Europe seeks to remain a major player in spaceflight activities, which increasingly includes satellite-based communications. However, European officials did not want to be beholden to Elon Musk and his Starlink constellation, which already provides secure global communications like those to be delivered by IRIS^2. European government leaders are already wary of relying on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for the launch of some if its satellites. Officials were similarly disposed toward Amazon's Project Kuiper constellation.

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