Redwire Awarded Contract to Deliver Quantum-Secure Spacecraft for European Space Agency's QKDSat

Redwire Corporation has been awarded a contract to develop a quantum-secure satellite under the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Quantum Key Distribution Satellite (QKDSat), within ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) Partnership Projects program. Redwire will manufacture and deliver its European-built Hammerhead spacecraft, equipped with the QKD payload and Redwire’s ADPMS-3 suite of avionics.

For QKDSat, Redwire is part of a multi-country consortium that includes Honeywell Aerospace and aims to provide quantum key distribution via satellite to safeguard against communication data breaches. Honeywell’s UK team is leading an industrial consortium that includes: Redwire Space of Belgium; Craft Prospect and British Telecom of the United Kingdom; QTLabs of Austria, Honeywell’s team in Canada, and several key players in Czechia and Switzerland.

"Quantum secure communications are critical to the future of European autonomy. We are proud to leverage Redwire’s expertise in spacecraft development and avionics to support QKDSat,” said Marc Dielissen, Executive Vice President of Redwire Europe. “Satellite quantum key distribution enables truly global, long-distance secure communication, overcoming the range limitations of terrestrial fiber-based quantum networks.” 

“With QKDSat, we will take a leading role in ensuring resilient and secure commercial and governmental communications across our Member States, particularly against a backdrop of ever-increasing cyber threats. We look forward to collaborating closely with Redwire and partners as we utilise their high-class expertise to deliver the future of satellite communications,” said Laurent Jaffart, Director of Resilience, Navigation and Connectivity at ESA.

QKDSat leverages Redwire’s expertise in state-of-the-art satellite design, development, integration, testing, and operations with Honeywell’s advanced optical payload terminal to accelerate the deployment of ultra-secure communication infrastructure in space. 

Redwire’s facility in Belgium has more than 50 years of spaceflight heritage developing spacecraft platforms and successfully delivering innovative technology for critical ESA programs, including Proba-1, Proba-2, Proba-V, Proba-3, Σyndeo-3, and the Atmospheric Limb Tracker for Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere (ALTIUS) missions.