SES and Luxembourg Government have announced their plan on developing a second satellite for GovSat (LuxGovSat S.A), the public private partnership and 50/50 joint venture between SES and the Luxembourg Government that provides secure, reliable and accessible satellite communication.

Yuriko Backes, Minister of Defence of Luxembourg, said: “The procurement of GovSat-2 underscores the success of the GovSat public-private partnership to provide Luxembourg, our allies and partners with secure military satellite communications that supplement their national systems and support a wide range of critical military, defence and civilian security applications.

Patrick Biewer, CEO of GovSat, stated: “GovSat-2 reflects the growing demand in military satcom, allowing our GovSat public-private venture to scale and broaden the services we have been providing since 2018. For this brand new satellite, we are adding more frequency bands along with innovative functionalities for it to be well-positioned to address the future connectivity challenges the NATO and partner nations face.”

The satellite GovSat 2 will be positioned over the EU satellite arc and will be joining GovSat 1 in augmenting reliable connectivity services for government customers over the region; the satellite will be built by Thales Alenia Space on its Spacebus 4000B2 platform.