SES Selects Arianespace to Launch EAGLE-1 Satellite for Europe’s Quantum Cryptography
9.11.2022 10:50:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
The EAGLE-1 satellite, which will support the end-to-end secure Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) system for Europe, will be launched for SES by Arianespace on a Vega C rocket from French Guiana as early as Q4 2024. The satellite will be placed into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The EAGLE-1 project comprising satellite and ground infrastructure, is developed by SES and its consortium of 20 European partners, with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission support.
Under the recently-signed agreement with ESA, SES and its partners will design, develop, launch and operate a satellite-based end-to-end QKD system for the purpose of testing and validating space-based secure transmission of cryptographic keys. The first European sovereign space-based QKD system will include the dedicated low earth orbit (LEO) EAGLE-1 satellite and state-of-the-art QKD operations centre in Luxembourg. In the scope of EuroQCI, the EAGLE-1 satellite will enable early access, validation, and integration of space-based QKD for EU Member States.
“Building the EAGLE-1 end-to-end system for secure data transmission and validating the long-distance Quantum Key Distribution technology is an innovative project that will benefit the EU Member States,” said Ruy Pinto, Chief Technology Officer at SES. “We have been working with Arianespace for decades to deliver our satellites into space and are delighted for them to be onboard to launch the EAGLE-1 satellite into orbit.”
“We are delighted and honored by this renewed mark of confidence from the leading global content connectivity service provider SES,” noted Marino Fragnito, Director of Arianespace’s Vega business unit. “Over the last 38 years, Arianespace has carried out 42 launches for its longstanding partner, and Vega C will now continue this successful track record. It is a great honor for us to support our customer’s ambitions and to be part of this mission that aims at implementing Europe’s satellite-enabled cybersecurity technology.”
Following the launch, the EAGLE-1 satellite will complete three years of in-orbit mission supported by the European Commission. During this operational phase, the satellite will allow European Union governments and institutions, as well as critical business sectors, early access to long-distance QKD that would path the way towards an EU constellation enabling ultra-secure data transmissions.
The EAGLE-1 project is co-funded by the ESA contribution of Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic under ARTES, as well as the European Commission through Horizon Europe.
Vega C, the new European light launcher successfully passed its inaugural flight on July 13 and now enters its operational phase under the responsibility of Arianespace. With this contract, Vega C backlog includes over 40 satellites contracts.
Vega C development program has been managed by ESA with 12 Member States of the Agency. Avio Spa (Colleferro, Italy) is the industrial prime of the Vega launch system. Vega C has been upgraded with more powerful first and second stage Solid Rocket Motors and with a larger fairing, which significantly increases payload mass and double allowable volume as compared to Vega. The launcher also better meets the specific needs of small spacecrafts, thanks to its improved SSMS dispenser and to its AVUM+ that allows seven re-ignitions instead of five. Vega C can thus deliver to three different separation orbits for its multiple payloads within the same mission, instead of the two previously possible with Vega.
For more information, visit the EAGLE-1 Newsroom
Follow SES on:
Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | LinkedIn | Instagram
Follow Arianespace on:
Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Instagram
About ESA
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. For more information see www.esa.int
The Telecommunications and Integrated Applications Directorate (TIA) supports innovation to boost the competitiveness of European industry in the global space market. This involves a wide range of activities, from space-based technology, systems, products for telecommunications development to the down-to-Earth application of space-based services. It also calls for engagement with a wide range of industrial, academic, and institutional partners. For more information, please visit our website: https://artes.esa.int/
About SES
SES has a bold vision to deliver amazing experiences everywhere on earth by distributing the highest quality video content and providing seamless connectivity around the world. As the leader in global content connectivity solutions, SES operates the world’s only multi-orbit constellation of satellites with the unique combination of global coverage and high performance, including the commercially-proven, low-latency Medium Earth Orbit O3b system. By leveraging a vast and intelligent, cloud-enabled network, SES is able to deliver high-quality connectivity solutions anywhere on land, at sea or in the air, and is a trusted partner to the world’s leading telecommunications companies, mobile network operators, governments, connectivity and cloud service providers, broadcasters, video platform operators and content owners. SES’s video network carries ~8,000 channels and has an unparalleled reach of 366 million households, delivering managed media services for both linear and non-linear content. The company is listed on Paris and Luxembourg stock exchanges (Ticker: SESG). Further information is available at: www.ses.com.
About Arianespace
Arianespace uses Space to make life better on Earth by providing launch services for all types of satellites into all orbits. It has orbited over 1,100 satellites since 1980. Arianespace is responsible for operating the new-generation Ariane 6 and Vega C launchers, developed by ESA, with respectively ArianeGroup and Avio as industrial primes. Arianespace is headquartered in Evry, near Paris, and has a technical facility at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, plus local offices in Washington, D.C., Tokyo and Singapore. Arianespace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which holds 74% of its share capital, with the balance held by 15 other shareholders from the Ariane and Vega European launcher industry, and ESA and Cnes as censors.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221108006349/en/
Contact information
For further information:
Suzanne Ong
External Communications, SES
Tel. +352 710 725 500
suzanne.ong@ses.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 20:15:00 EEST | Press release
Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've kept track of every piece of feedback from our merchants: what frustrates them and what they wish Octane AI could do. Phoenix is the result, and it k
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 20:06:00 EEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 19:48:00 EEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 18:50:00 EEST | Press release
Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia. Emerging markets are home to significant health needs and entrepreneurial potential, yet many promising ventures can struggle to access the capital, specialist guidance, and health-system connections required to grow. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2024 reported that Latin America and Africa together accounted for around 3% of global venture-capital deals in the first half of 2024, while venture-capital values fell by 19% in Asia-Pacific and 80% in Africa. At the same time, entrepre
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 17:48:00 EEST | Press release
Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most likely configuration for low-cost fusion energy. Subsequent results from facilities worldwide, including the DIII-D, JET, and SMART, have shown that NT can deliver strong
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom