Cannes, January 4, 2022 – Thales Alenia Space, the joint company between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), logged a number of successes in 2021, including key contracts, major industrial milestones and launches, a series of innovations and new capital investments.
Capitalizing on its globally recognized expertise in constellations, Thales Alenia Space was chosen by the operator Telesat in February 2021 to build Lightspeed, a constellation of 298 telecom satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). The Lightspeed network will offer data rates of several terabits/second worldwide, providing secure, high-speed and high-performance connectivity for professional applications.
Also in February 2021, Thales Alenia Space and Satelit Nusantara Tiga (SNT) announced that they had finalized funding for the development of the Satria broadband communications satellite, designed to bridge the digital divide in Indonesia. This key step follows the preliminary agreement to start various activities for the satellite, signed in early September 2020.
Thales Alenia Space won five new contracts in 2021 as prime contractor for geostationary satellites. We will build the SICRAL 3A and 3B satellites for the Italian Ministry of Defense, the HTS 113BT satellite for the Indonesian operator Telkomsat, and the ASTRA 1P and ASTRA 1Q satellites for the operator SES. The latter two satellites are based, respectively on the all-electric Spacebus NEO platform, proven in orbit, and Space Inspire, the company’s brand new all-digital solution, highly flexible and reconfigurable in orbit in virtually real time. Thales Alenia Space ended the year on a high note with these five satellites, giving it leadership in the geostationary telecom satellite market in 2021.