Luxembourg-based satellite operator, now the world’s biggest player in the sector, used the Novaspace Paris World Space Business Week to announce an expansion of its Mid-Earth orbiting fleet.
Adel Al-Saleh, CEO, SES, told delegates that despite it only being 2 months since the integration with Intelsat, and considerable progress was being made in terms of the teams, and obtaining the synergies. “We have made several decisions on the product portfolios,” for example. He said that SES “couldn’t wait” for the remaining [three] mPOWER satellites to be launched. “They are already full, and we need them on orbit,” he noted.
He told his audience that in some cases it would mean the development of new satellite positions and developments. He said that SES would no longer be building “islands” of solutions. Instead, SES would incrementally develop a software designed platforms, that would not be rigid in its approach.
One major announcement is that SES and K2 Space would have a strategic collaboration to advance the development of SES’s future medium Earth orbit (MEO) network. The collaboration combines SES’s decades of experience operating global multi-orbit networks, including its O3b mPOWER MEO network, with K2 Space’s agile engineering capabilities to co-develop future network infrastructure and technologies.
Earlier this year, SES and K2 Space started development activities to validate new network technologies geared for commercial and sovereign government applications. An on-orbit mission in the first quarter of 2026 will be the first step towards rolling out SES’s future MEO network. This marks a shift in the traditional satellite industry approach, moving from legacy waterfall models to an iterative process that supports continuous innovation and responsiveness to market needs.
“Our future MEO network will evolve through agile innovation cycles,” said Al-Saleh. “By collaborating with K2 Space and other trusted innovative partners, we’re combining our solutions development experience and operational depth with NewSpace agility to develop a flexible, software-defined network that adapts to customer requirements.”
Development efforts will span Europe and the United States, leveraging the strengths of both companies to overcome long development timelines, while accelerating delivery of high-value network services.
IRIS2, the scheme for a ‘super secure’ constellation, would be a component of the overall plan for the MEO expansion.
This initiative is a key component of SES’s future MEO strategy, which emphasizes modular growth, open architecture, software-defined capabilities, and support for both commercial and government solutions. SES’s future MEO network will be designed to support multi-mission capabilities such as hosted payloads, space situational awareness, direct-to-device data relay, and sovereign services, while enabling reliable communications for mobility applications and resilient enterprise backhaul.
