For planet earth and beyond
27 March 2015 – UK satcoms operator Inmarsat has transferred its Broadband Global Area Network services to Alphasat, the advanced telecommunications satellite developed in a partnership between Inmarsat and ESA. Inmarsat will be using Alphasat to provide BGAN-based safety services across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
16 March 2015 – Three key components of Eutelsat' s forthcoming EUTELSAT 8 West B satellite will be embarking on their first mission into space thanks to Atlas, a recent extension of ARTES 3-4 in which ESA provides assistance in obtaining first flight opportunities for new products.
25 February 2015 – ESA and the European Commission announce that the European Data Relay System (EDRS) will provide services to the EU Copernicus programme, which is to serve as its anchor customer.
20 February 2015 – The Hispasat AG1 communications satellite completes the integration phase in the OHB System's cleanroom in Bremen (DE) and is now undergoing environmental impact testing.
11 February 2015 – As Sentinel-2A nears the end of testing before being shipped to its launch site, one of the last jobs has been to make sure the satellite’s laser terminal is up to the job of delivering large volumes of data to the geostationary EDRS satellite.
Reflecting EU socio-economic priorities, satellite communications is a key sector of the space industry. This article explains its huge (often invisible) impact on the daily lives of citizens. (PDF version also available)
News: ARTES 3-4 success story
With the support of ESA, Airbus Defence and Space has developed a key component for the commercial satellite market – a versatile subreflector assembly – that is now validated for flight.
News: an important milestone for the ARTES 7 EDRS programme
28 November 2014 – Marking a first in space, Sentinel-1A and Alphasat have linked up by laser stretching almost 36 000 km across space to deliver images of Earth just moments after they were captured.
The Alphasat/Sentinel-1A optical link payloads have now been qualified. This ESA video describes how the system works.
News: the next stage of ESA's long-running ARTES 11 Iris programme
26 Nov 2014 – A contract worth €15 million was signed by ESA’s Magali Vaissiere, ESA’s Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications, and Rupert Pearce, Inmarsat CEO, worth €15 million at Westminster in London, UK.