Space Intel Report

BRUSSELS — EQT Private Equity of Sweden is purchasing ride-share mission management and integration provider Exolaunch of Germany in a transaction of undisclosed value that dealroom.co estimated at $339 million, an amount that would testify to Exolaunch’s rapid growth in the last couple of years. The transaction, expected to close by the end of the year, is EQT’s first in the space sector. Exolaunch was founded in 2010 as a spinoff of the Technical University of Berlin by . . .

BRUSSELS— Seven months after securing an initial budget to jump-start a European intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) service, the European Space Agency (ESA) is about to receive a list of what the future users of the service want from it. ESA received 166 million euros ($196 million) in subscriptions for what ESA calls its European Resilience from Space Element 1 program at the agency’s November 2025 ministerial conference.

BRUSSELS — German defense technology contractor Rheinmetall AG,  investing heavily in space technology to capture a share of the German military’s $40-billion, five year space budget, has signed an MoU with US-based Vantor to integrate Vantor’s Tensorglobe geospatial platform and satellites into Rheinmetall’s command and control architecture.

BRUSSELS — The European Space Agency (ESA) is examining ways to increase the launch rates of its Ariane 6 heavy-lift and Vega-C medium-lift rockets to capture what’s almost certain to be a surge in demand starting now and continuing through the end of the decade. Ariane 6, which conducted its eighth straight successful flight on June 17, carrying 36 Amazon Leo satellites into low Earth orbit, launched four times in 2025.

PARIS —  The steep and sudden increase in German space spending, especially military space, was always going to be complicated for France. After so many years leading the European pack and urging that its neighbors do more, the fact that Germany is now Europe’s biggest space spender sits uneasily among French officials, even if they know the new German policy is good for all of Europe. How to approach it is the question.

PARIS — The French arms procurement agency, DGA, making good on a 10-year, 1-billion-euro ($1.16 billion) commitment made in June 2025, has purchased a first tranche of Eutelsat OneWeb capacity in a contract valued at 138 million euros over four years. DGA said the contract is part DGA’s Centaure program, an acronym for Priority OneWeb Capacity, which has a maximum value of 350 million euros over eight years. It is the first commitment under the June 2025 Nexus - New Space for multiple . . .

PARIS — Europe’s Iris2 multi-orbit secured connectivity network, facing pressure from European governments to limit it schedule delays, is adding 66 smaller satellites to its low-Earth-orbit component to assure launches starting in 2029, with the full-capacity, 264-satellite system to be launched around 2032, according to European government and industry officials. Both groups of satellites will be launched into the same 1,200-km orbit.

BERLIN — Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace does not lack for security-based space ambition: An Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) constellation; maritime AIS and radar, secure satcom, RF signals intelligence — the company is preparing a bouquet of space-based security and defense options, including the use of its KSat global ground station network, for allied governments. The sovereign space push includes Lithuania-based Kongsberg NanoAvionics, a small satellite platform builder.

BERLIN — European governments spent years trying to figure out how to stimulate demand for their Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket so that, even it it’s not profitable, its losses could be kept to a level acceptable to its contributing nations. That script has been turn on its head. The challenge now is whether Ariane 6 can increase its production rate in time to capture the coming demand from European governments, especially in the next few years.

BERLIN — The German Bundeswehr is coming to grips with the fact that its national space industrial base is to small to handle the ramp-up required of Germany’s five-year 35-billion-euro ($40.4 billion) military space budget starting this year. Going outside Germany for some of the capacity is one option.