Europe has embarked on the adventure of technological sovereignty. It is pointing to several fields at the same time, being the space sovereignty one of them. Pursuing this objective, the European Defense Agency -EDA- has just awarded a research contract to an aerospace consortium with the aim of creating a military satellite Optimized for very low Earth orbit.
And the Spanish Sener will be the one to lead that space A-Team.
In short. The EDA contract is for 15.65 million euros and the objective is as mentioned: to create the first European military satellite concept especially used for VLEO space. Spain, France, Luxembourg, Portugal and Slovenia are the countries that are financing the project baptized as VLEO-DEF, and the Spanish Sener will have the task of leading 16 other companies belonging to those five countries.
This is not the first time we have talked about Sener Aeroespacial. It is the subsidiary of the SENER group and is one of the Spanish companies who participates in the ambitious rearmament plan of the European Union. It has more than 4,000 employees and its experience covers space, guidance, control and unmanned systems.
Very low Earth orbit. Before seeing what the satellite will do, let’s see what very low Earth orbit is. Call too VLEOis the orbital strip that is between 150 and 400 km altitude. It is the lower end of low orbit and, although it may not seem like it, it is actually very close to the Earth’s surface. This brings key benefits such as the ability to capture images with much greater detail, a better signal-to-noise ratio in optical and radio frequency sensors and, above all, very low latency. After all, it is closer than other satellites and the signal must travel a shorter distance.
However, it is not a comfortable strip. The atmosphere at that height generates very intense friction and there is an aggressive chemical environment. This implies that the satellites are not “floating”, but rather require almost continuous propulsion. And, in addition, the materials must be very resistant to resist corrosion and, basically, not disintegrate after a short time.
VLEO‑DEF. And the idea, precisely, is that. The consortium must find a way to develop a military satellite specifically designed to operate at around 250-350 kilometers altitude in a sustainable manner. The duration of the project will be 36 months and the 17 companies will have to find the key to the technologies that allow the future construction of satellites to operate in VLEO.
Because, although this field is very interesting for scientific and observation research, in the military spectrum, flying at that distance from the Earth seems very interesting to achieve what we have mentioned: a much clearer and more detailed observation of the territory. And it is important because we constantly see that they “keep an eye” on what neighboring countries are doing, which has allowed us to know some Chinese operations or the North Korean military ship disaster.
Sovereignty. If the program comes to fruition, such an observation satellite can provide key data in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions by being capable of offering much faster communication between the satellite and military commands. With VLEO-DEF, the ultimate goal is to pave the way for future VLEO satellite constellations for border security, protection and intelligence, all within the aforementioned sovereignty.
The Ukrainian War and the gas cut by Russia, the case of Greenland with the United States and blackmail of the American president have awakened in the EU that idea that they should start to fend for themselves in fields where they previously delegated to the allies. That is why rearmament began, but also the search for energy alternatives, rare earth, defense programs with European AI and cconstruction of data centers and semiconductor factories.
And in all these programs, Spain is emerging as a key partner with space programs, chip development, renewable matrix and with projects for data centers.
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