EU to launch its own communications satellite network - DW (English)

2 years ago 39

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU subordinate states agreed Thursday to greenlight the outer communications net strategy IRIS2 (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnection and Security by Satellites).

The 6-billion-euro task is portion of an inaugural to wean disconnected a bloc-wide reliance connected overseas suppliers similar China and Russia. EU agencies volition lend 2.4 cardinal euros to the project, which lawmakers task volition alteration unafraid connection services by 2027. The backstage assemblage is expected to money the remaining 3.6 cardinal euros.

Plans were archetypal announced successful February, earlier Russia's penetration of Ukraine. In the months since then, outer net has proven useful. Shortly aft the commencement of the war, Russia blocked Ukraine's terrestrial net connection. Tech billionaire Elon Musk offered the state escaped entree to his satellite net strategy Starlink successful response, which kept radical connected to the net contempt the Russian attacks connected Ukrainian telecommunications systems.

But past period Musk said helium won't connection the work for escaped everlastingly and asked the US Department of Defense to assistance ft the bill, a determination that brought Ukraine's reliable, unafraid net entree backmost into question.

IRIS2 would connection a solution to problems similar this, according to a statement by European Parliament centrist governmental radical Renew Europe.

"[IRIS 2] volition unafraid the Union's sovereignty and autonomy by guaranteeing less dependencies connected third-country infrastructure, and the proviso of captious connection services wherever terrestrial networks are absent oregon disrupted, arsenic observed, for instance, successful Ukraine," the connection work successful part.

The program's main nonsubjective is to connection governmental services unafraid entree to the net successful situation situations — similar cyberattacks and earthy disasters that harm terrestrial net entree — but the multi-orbital satellites volition besides connection broadband transportation successful places wherever net entree presently isn't disposable successful Europe, the Arctic portion and Africa.

"For the archetypal time, the European Union volition person its ain telecommunication constellation, successful peculiar successful debased orbits (LEO), the caller frontier for telecommunication satellites," said MEP Christophe Grudler (Mouvement Democrate, France), Rapporteur connected the EU unafraid connectivity programme.

IRIS2 volition articulation EU outer systems Galileo (navigation) and Kopernikus (Earth observation), which person been circling the globe since the precocious 1990s.