Why Europe never committed to satellite servicing until now
Thales Alenia Space's May 15 announcement that it is building a satellite servicing vehicle comes after years of European primes flirting with the idea, but never committing. Left unsaid in recent discussions is why Europe, through Italy and TAS, is now on a path to having its own satellite servicer, possibly on par with Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicles.
Like in the U.S. years earlier, prime contractors looked for an anchor customer – the U.S. government – to ensure that if they started a satellite servicing business, it would be stable. That took 18 years in the U.S. (counting from DARPA's SUMO program in 2002 to the docking of Northrop's MEV-1 with an Intelsat satellite in 2020), and required a shift to thinking that the commercial sector was sufficient business rationale.
Europe's interest in satellite servicing reached a high-water mark in 2013 when the European Space Agency started a program to de-orbit Envisat, a hulking, 8,000-kilogram SAR satellite that died suddenly the year prior. ESA and European industry found themselves at odds, with industry concluding that Envisat's size and speed made it virtually impossible to wrangle.
In 2018 when ESA, still hoping to cultivate a domestic satellite servicing business, dropped Envisat as the target, it found industry unwilling to think of commercial plans that extended beyond agency missions. The agency later turned to Swiss startup ClearSpace, awarding the company an €86 million contract to deorbit a spent payload adaptor that launched on the Italian-built Vega rocket.
Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space have both routinely voiced interest in satellite servicing over the years, but have seen U.S. competitors and startups globally speed past them.
What changed:
- The Italian government replaced ESA as TAS’s government sponsor, providing funding through its Covid-19 economic recovery program. Nevermind that the program is a full three years after the main impacts of Covid, the program has become a boon for Italian space companies
- TAS has the example of a successful satellite servicing business from Northrop Grumman. Intelsat’s contracts to use two MEVs and a next-gen Mission Extension Pod has shown how satellite servicing can succeed commercially. And the 2020 docking between Intelsat-901 and MEV-1 reaffirmed satellite servicing can be done technologically
- Governments are showing increased appetite for debris removal, demonstrated by contracts to Japanese company Astroscale, European company ClearSpace and U.S. company Northrop Grumman (OSAM-1). This represents a shift from the previous zeitgeist of GEO satellite servicing, but nonetheless provides a firmer case for government business that previously proved elusive
- A growing cadre of startups are raising funds for space tugs, most of which have roadmaps to evolve into satellite servicing platforms for repair, refueling, inspection, deorbiting and other functions. Companies such as Exotrail, Starfish Space and D-Orbit are building businesses with multiple in-space revenue streams, derisking satellite servicing in the eyes of governments and primes
SOURCE: https://spacenews.com/italy-awards-256-million-contract-for-2026-in-orbit-servicing-mission/