Space · Tuesday, 1 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Europe ordered 18 satellites to cut its reliance on Starlink. The operator in charge learned the job on American-built ones.

Space 1 min 18 sources

A German maker won nearly a billion euros to build the first hardware for IRIS2, the European Union's own satellite internet system. It does not start work until 2030.

1bn of 15.6bn euros

the price of these 18 satellites, set against the cost of the whole system

the total rose by almost half at a review on 7 August, which also added 66 satellites [1]

2.6 tonnes

the weight of each satellite OHB will build

that and 15 kilowatts of power are the only published specifications; the radio gear inside has not been described [1]

4bn of 15.6bn euros

the share of the bill carried by the three companies building it

the rest comes from the European Commission, the European Space Agency and national governments [1]

2030

when the satellites are due to start work

the review that grew the system finished 24 days before this first contract [1]

The lead story — what happened

The German satellite maker OHB said on 31 August it will build 18 satellites for IRIS2, the European Union's own satellite internet system. It values the deal at nearly 1 billion euros, or about $1.16 billion. [1][2]
The order came from SES, the operator responsible for the middle layer of IRIS2. SES will also design and build the radio equipment, the user terminals and the control rooms that governments will use. [1]
Nobody has said what those 18 satellites will actually carry. What OHB did publish is their weight, 2.6 tonnes each, and their power, up to 15 kilowatts. [1]
IRIS2 exists because European officials have pressed for a satellite communications system of their own, to rely less on foreign ones such as SpaceX's Starlink. [1]
The whole system got bigger on 7 August. A review added 66 more satellites in low orbit and pushed the total cost up by almost half, to 15.6 billion euros. [1]
This is the first contract of any kind for the system since that review. The satellites are due to enter service in 2030. [1]
SES leads the middle layer because it already runs one of its own. That commercial medium-orbit broadband system is called O3b. [1]
The current O3b mPower satellites are built by Boeing, an American company. In March, SES ordered its next medium-orbit system of 28 satellites from K2 Space, another American company. [1]
Three satellite operators are building IRIS2 together, in a group called SpaceRISE: SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat. [1]
SpaceRISE is putting in 4 billion euros of the 15.6 billion. The rest comes from the European Commission, the European Space Agency and national governments. [1]
Europe is buying its own way into space in more than one place at once. On 27 August the European Space Agency signed its first three rocket contracts, worth 543.6 million euros, with Isar Aerospace, PLD Space and Rocket Factory Augsburg. [3]
None of those three rockets has ever reached orbit, and none of the IRIS2 satellites has been built. Both bills are being paid years before anything works. [1][3]

Who is involved

OHB

a German satellite maker; it will build the 18 satellite bodies for nearly 1 billion euros
SES

a satellite operator based in Luxembourg that already runs its own medium-orbit broadband fleet; it placed the order and will build the radio equipment
SpaceRISE

the group of three European satellite operators - SES, France's Eutelsat and Spain's Hispasat - building IRIS2 for the European Commission
The European Commission

the European Union's executive arm; it is paying for most of IRIS2 and wants the system under European control
Marco Fuchs

OHB's chief executive; he called the contract another step toward Europe's independence

What is pushing on this

Wanting a system Europe controls High↑

European officials keep saying they must rely less on foreign services such as Starlink [1]

The bill Building↑

one review in August lifted the total by nearly half, to 15.6 billion euros [1]

The wait High→

nothing flies until 2030, and the first hardware was only ordered on 31 August [1]

Where the know-how sits Steady→

the operator leading the job runs a Boeing-built fleet and has ordered its next one from K2 Space [1]

How it unfolded

March SES orders 28 satellites for its own next medium-orbit fleet from K2 Space, an American company [1]
7 Aug a review adds 66 low-orbit satellites to IRIS2 and lifts the total cost by nearly half, to 15.6 billion euros [1]
27 Aug the European Space Agency signs its first three rocket contracts, worth 543.6 million euros [3]
31 Aug OHB signs with SES to build 18 medium-orbit satellites for nearly 1 billion euros [1][2]
2030 the IRIS2 satellites are due to start work [1]

Where this points

Watch who is given the low-orbit satellite contracts. That is the part of IRIS2 that grew by 66 satellites in August, and where the question of who may build Europe's own system gets answered in public. [1]

The rest of the day

13 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Orbital garages ordered for missile defence

Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest US weapons makers, gave the Seattle-area company Gravitics a subcontract on 26 May to build three Orbital Carriers. These are large spacecraft meant to hold five or six smaller ones in orbit and release them when needed. A securities filing puts the value at $249,900. [4]

Why it matters — Gravitics is going public by merging into a listed shell company and wants to raise $125 million, and this order is the first named work behind that pitch. [4]
03
Starship's booster fires all 33 engines

SpaceX held its Super Heavy booster down on the pad in south Texas on 28 August and ran all 33 of its engines for their full length. The upper stage had already fired its six engines the week before. [5]

Why it matters — It clears the way for Flight 14, expected in mid-September, which would be Starship's first try at reaching orbit after thirteen flights that did not. [5]
04
Roman unfolds and begins its checks

The new US telescope let go of its rocket at 7:57am US eastern time on 30 August and began a three-month coast out to L2, a quiet point beyond Earth's night side. Its solar panels and sunshade opened an hour and 23 minutes after launch. [6][7]

Why it matters — The antenna and the cover over its main mirror come next, and its systems are being switched on, adjusted and calibrated all the way out. [7]
05
Turkiye becomes the 71st Artemis signatory

Turkiye's industry and technology minister, Mehmet Fatih Kacir, signed the Artemis Accords at the US space agency's headquarters on 31 August. The Accords are a short set of principles for how countries behave while exploring the Moon. [8]

Why it matters — The US space agency has invited every signatory to contribute hardware, instruments or small satellites to its planned Moon base. [8]
06
A Japanese radar satellite heads for orbit

Rocket Lab was set to launch an Electron rocket from New Zealand on 31 August carrying one Strix satellite for Synspective, a Tokyo company. Strix satellites use radar, so they work through cloud, day or night. Ten are already in orbit. [9]

Why it matters — Synspective says the fleet can confirm changes on the ground during earthquakes and floods at night, when an ordinary camera in orbit sees nothing. [9]
07
A black hole spits part of its meal back

Astronomers led from the University of Warwick in England used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to watch a black hole about ten times the Sun's mass pull gas off a companion star. Much of that gas was thrown back out as winds and jets, and the eruption carried on after the feeding stopped. [10]

Why it matters — It suggests a large share of what falls toward a black hole never reaches it, which changes how pairs of stars are thought to end up. [10]
08
Three helicopters ordered for Mars

AeroVironment said on 27 August it has a contract from the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will help design and build three helicopters for SkyFall, a Mars mission due to launch in late 2028. They carry radar that looks 12 to 60 centimetres below the surface for ice. [12]

Why it matters — They ride on a mission testing nuclear-electric propulsion, so the helicopters travel as passengers on an engine experiment. [12]
09
A camera that aims to beat the blur limit

Diffraqtion, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, raised $10 million from investors including Lockheed Martin's venture arm and Sumitomo's. It is trying to get past the diffraction limit - the rule that how much detail a camera can see is set by the width of its lens and the colour of the light. [13]

Why it matters — Its simulations suggest features 20 times smaller than a normal camera sees. So far the method has been tested in a laboratory, with a small US defence contract to try it on ground telescopes. [13]
10
An antenna maker buys its third company

CesiumAstro of Austin, Texas bought 1Aardvark of Manassas, Virginia on 25 August, its third purchase in under a year, and said a new funding round was already oversubscribed. 1Aardvark writes mission software for US missile defence and tracking programmes. [14][15]

Why it matters — CesiumAstro is turning from a parts supplier into a fleet operator, with its first satellite due in October and 737 planned. [14]
11
A $28m bet on a new weather sounder

Spire Global won a $28 million US government contract to build and flight-qualify a satellite carrying a hyperspectral microwave sounder. It follows a small test version the company launched in January. [16]

Why it matters — Microwave sounders read temperature and moisture straight through cloud; the bet here is doing it from a commercial satellite instead of a large government one, in service no later than 2030. [16]
12
The US military's orbital data network fills out

Northrop Grumman satellites are close to launch for the first working layer of the US military's data network in low orbit, the US Space Development Agency's director said on 24 August. He said York Space Systems' second batch performed much better than its first, and its team worked two to three times faster. [17]

Why it matters — The agency is now being asked to operate fleets rather than demonstrate them, and says building at that scale is the hard part. [17]
13
A Navy SEAL astronaut leaves the agency

Jonny Kim left the US space agency on 27 August after nine years and one long stay on the International Space Station. He is a doctor with a Harvard medical degree, a naval aviator and a former Navy SEAL who served in more than 100 combat operations. [11]

Why it matters — He is going back to full-time military service rather than to another job in spaceflight. [11]
14
Europe lines up two Earth-watchers

The European Space Agency called media briefings for 4 September on FLEX and Copernicus Sentinel-3C. FLEX carries an instrument that detects the faint glow plants give off while they use sunlight, a signal that changes with plant health. [18]

Why it matters — Sentinel-3C measures ocean height, surface temperature and sea-ice thickness for the European Union's Copernicus programme, which supports weather forecasting. [18]

02 Lesson why it matters

You can change who builds a thing. You cannot change who learned it first.

Europe can decide where its satellites are made. The skill to run them was learned on satellites somebody else made.

The twist

A rule can decide who gets paid. It cannot reach the thing that makes the job possible, which is what somebody already learned by doing it once.

How it works

A government decides a service it needs must not be run from abroad
The only lever it has is money - who may be paid to build the thing
So it writes rules about contracts, and awards them at home
But knowing how to run the thing sits inside a company, learned by doing it
And that company learned it by buying from the suppliers now being avoided
The money stops at the border. The experience walked across it years ago

Where you've seen this

Chip factories

countries fund plants at home and staff them with engineers trained at the foreign firms they are catching up with

Export bans

a machine can be stopped at a border; the engineer who designed it can take a job anywhere

A restaurant

the recipes stay in the safe, and walk out of the door with the head chef

Football leagues

a cap on foreign players does not keep out the foreign coaching that trained them

The catch

Sometimes a rule does reach the knowing. Where the ability lives in a machine rather than in people, blocking the machine really does stop the work.

And the whole of it

The German builder, the operator in Luxembourg and the officials writing the rule are all working with something learned from someone they are now trying to need less. So is nearly everybody else, and none of us can see the full chain of hands our own skills passed through.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

A sovereignty programme has bought its first hardware from a German firm, while the operator trusted to run it built that trust on American-made satellites and has just ordered more of them.

Why it works on us — Independence is a word that closes the argument about price and dates, because it moves the question from what you get to who you are.

Who gains

OHB — the German maker gets nearly 1 billion euros for 18 satellites, in a programme whose whole purpose is to keep the work inside Europe. [1]
SES — it leads and is paid for the middle layer of a public system, using experience built up on its own commercial fleet. [1]
Lockheed Martin — Its name turns up twice in one day's space news: on the subcontract Gravitics is using to support a $125 million share offering, and in the funding round Diffraqtion just closed. [4][13]
Turkiye — signing the Artemis Accords puts it in line to supply hardware, instruments or small satellites to a US-led Moon programme. [8]

Who pays

European taxpayers — the cost of IRIS2 rose by nearly half at one review, to 15.6 billion euros, most of it public money, for a service that starts in 2030. [1]
Boeing — It builds SES's current medium-orbit satellites, and SpaceNews reports it is likely ineligible for the European system SES will lead. [1]
The US astronaut corps — Jonny Kim left after nine years and one flight, taking a doctor, naval aviator and former Navy SEAL back to the military. [11]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

What the 18 IRIS2 satellites will actually do.

Neither OHB nor SES has described the communications equipment they will carry. The only published figures are 2.6 tonnes and 15 kilowatts. [1]
02

Whether American builders are barred from IRIS2 work.

SpaceNews describes Boeing, which builds SES's current medium-orbit satellites, as likely ineligible for IRIS2 awards, and calls K2 Space another American company. No published rule has been shown either way. [1]
03

Who pays if the cost rises again.

The total went up by nearly half at one review in August, to 15.6 billion euros. The split between the three companies, the European Commission, the European Space Agency and national governments is described but not itemised. [1]
04

Which agency is paying Spire, and for what.

The SpaceNews headline calls it a NOAA contract and the first sentence of the same report calls it a NASA contract. Both US agencies appear in the story. [16]
05

Whether Rocket Lab's Electron actually flew on 31 August.

Our sources cover the countdown and the plan, not the outcome. [9]
06

What Gravitics' three Orbital Carriers are really worth.

The subcontract is time-and-materials with a stated value of $249,900, a figure that can grow. The company calls it a first production order with multiple flight opportunities. [4]
07

What Diffraqtion's cameras can do outside a laboratory.

The claim of seeing features 20 times smaller comes from simulations. The method has been tested in a laboratory, and a small US defence contract is meant to try it on ground telescopes. [13]
08

When Starship Flight 14 flies.

Mid-September is what reporters expect after the 28 August engine test. SpaceX has not published a date. [5]

04 Hope carry this

Seventy-one countries have now signed the same short set of rules for how to behave on the Moon. Turkiye signed on Monday, two years after its first astronaut flew.