Days after the German parliament approved funding for new military communications satellites, the Bundeswehr has awarded Airbus a €2.1 billion ($2.3 billion) contract to build the new SatcomBW 3 constellation due to be deployed before the end of the decade.
The contract includes design, production, launch and in-orbit delivery of two satellites to be placed in geostationary orbit, Airbus said on July 4. They are supposed to be in operation for about 15 years.
The German government has said it expects services with the new system to start in 2027.
“At a time when Western democracies are challenged and where the European institutional space ecosystem is struggling, we are excited and grateful to develop and build this leading-edge system,” Airbus's boss of Defence and Space Michael Schoellhorn said in a statement.
The contract is a boost for Airbus's space business, whose commercial telecommunications has been struggling. The European aerospace giant in June lowered its full-year guidance as it disclosed it would take a €900 million earnings charge in the second quarter because of troubled civil satellite projects. Last year, Airbus took a €600 million charge on its space programs and put in place a new management team that conducted a review identifying the greater scale of the problems.
Airbus said the military satellite design will be based on its Eurostar Neo platform and lead to spacecraft weighing 6 metric tons.
The program is supposed to assure Germany's access to sovereign space communications capacity and address growing bandwidth demand, while also assuring the country can meet its military satcom obligations to NATO.