Iridium announced the selection of Thales Alenia Space to build Iridium NEXT, the world's largest low-orbit constellation
Following this announcement, Reynald Seznec, CEO of Thales Alenia Space declared
“We were selected for this contract following a long international competition that started back in 2007,” said Reynald Seznec, President and CEO of Thales Alenia Space. “It is the result of the dedication and commitment of our teams and those of our partners. This success is also a clear recognition of our expertise in system architecture and telecommunications in general, and also confirms our competitiveness and our leadership in the constellation market. At the same time, it called on the full sum of our experience in organizing top-flight industrial consortiums, and our proven ability to help our customers develop suitable financial arrangements.”
Background
The signature bears on a Firm Fixed Price contract and an Authorization to Proceed (ATP) to construct the Iridium NEXT Low-Earth-Orbit satellite constellation.
Based on the ATP, the partners will be able to start the programme in timely fashion to launch the first satellites starting in 2015. The overall contract will take effect as soon as financial arrangements are finalized.
Thales Alenia Space is the program prime contractor, in charge of engineering, system integration and supply of a space segment comprising 66 operation satellites, 6 in-orbit spare satellites and 9 ground spare satellites. To perform this large scale contract, Thales Alenia Space has set up strategic industrial partnerships, and plans to subcontract 40 % to companies in North America. Thales Alenia Space France, Italy and Belgium will be strongly involved in this project with activities shared between Cannes, Toulouse, Rome and Charleroi.
Iridium NEXT will be compatible with Iridium’s existing network and will gradually replace it to ultimately provide enhanced 3G type mobile services. Thales Alenia Space developed a sophisticated, yet flexible solution to meet this requirement. Based on its LEO platform product line, specifically developed for constellations, Iridium NEXT satellites will carry a sophisticated active antenna, 2-axis solar arrays and software compliant to onboard processing needed to route calls.
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