EU Plans to Spend Billions on Satellite Fleet to Rival Musk

(Bloomberg) -- The European Union revealed its most detailed plans yet for a low-earth orbit satellite system worth billions of euros aimed at delivering secure communications for the bloc. 

The project will cost an estimated 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in both public and private money. The European Commission plans to spend 2.4 billion euros from its budget, while the rest would come from EU countries and industry. 

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has been pushing the project through the bloc for more than a year. He told French TV station BFM on Monday it’s essential that Europe has its own so-called “constellation” of satellites. 

He said the EU’s space plans will help boost the cybersecurity and resilience of EU countries, while ensuring better broadband access across Europe and Africa. 

“This is of central importance in terms of our strategic and technical sovereignty,” Breton said Tuesday at a press conference.

The EU is entering a fierce global race to blanket the earth with rival low-earth orbit satellite coverage. These spacecraft are much closer to the planet than the traditional geostationary kind which beam TV and remote communications. This means they can connect users to faster broadband, although they don’t stay in orbit as long and many more need to be launched to achieve the same geographic coverage.

What’s more, fears of collisions are growing with the number and relative density of equipment in orbit.

The dominant player is Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which has launched about 2,000 spacecraft for its Starlink system. It aims to provide consumer broadband to remote regions, as well as defense and business applications, and has the advantage of using its own re-usable rockets. It’s become one of the world’s most valuable private companies. Rival billionaire Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos is also planning a similar system called Project Kuiper.

The EU’s closest equivalent may be a startup called OneWeb, which was unexpectedly bought out of bankruptcy by the U.K. government after the outbreak of Covid-19. The U.K. is now part of a consortium which includes the Indian conglomerate Bharti Global, SoftBank Group Corp. and French satellite operator Eutelsat SA. It’s put two thirds of an initial phase of 648 satellites into orbit. 

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