Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defense and Space have been awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) for phase B in the development of the latter’s latest platform for geostationary satellites, through the Neosat programme.
Under the new €18.2m contract, Airbus will work for satellite design, communications module and service module, as well as propulsion module definition.
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Thales Alenia Space will develop a new lighter and smaller telecommunications satellite platform to replace its current Spacebus product line.
Expected to improve competitiveness by around 30%, the new platform will allow Thales to address the market and customers requirements now and in the coming years.
The new-generation modular design platform, which considerably reduces the production and integration time, will be optimised for all-electric propulsion; its design will also support the use of chemical propulsion systems when required.
Thales Alenia Space president and CEO Jean Loïc Galle said the project should help the company increase its share of an extremely competitive market.
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By GlobalData"We will be mobilising all of our forces throughout Thales Alenia Space to meet the performance and competitiveness objectives under very tight deadlines, since we are aiming to include this new platform in our offer by the end of 2015," Galle said.
The complete project has been selected as flagship programmes in France’s Future Investment Plan in 2011. It was allocated a budget of €259m during the ESA ministerial-level conference in November 2012.
