ESA Advances VLEO Skimsat Mission
Redwire and Thales Alenia Space Partner to Develop Novel Spacecraft
Redwire Corporation has reached an agreement with Thales Alenia Space that makes it the prime contractor for the ESA Skimsat mission, leveraging its Phantom spacecraft.
“Redwire’s Phantom spacecraft is built on five decades of satellite manufacturing experience and flight heritage."
Marc Dielissen, Redwire
Skimsat is an ESA technology demonstration mission for a small satellite designed to operate in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO). Thales Alenia Space in the UK will be a major contributor to the mission and is currently selected to provide the electric propulsion subsystem. Thales had coordinated the preliminary study for the mission.
The Phantom spacecraft is an advanced European VLEO platform designed to operate in the lower reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. The Skimsat mission aims to improve satellite sustainability and mission performance while reducing spacecraft mass and mission cost by enabling sustainable operational capability at lower altitudes.
“Redwire is a global leader in VLEO capabilities and we are grateful for the trust from ESA to accelerate development of the Skimsat mission, as the prime contractor, which could unlock critical infrastructure in VLEO for a wide array of future intelligence, Earth science, and communications missions,” said Marc Dielissen, General Manager of Redwire Space Belgium. “Redwire’s Phantom spacecraft is built on five decades of satellite manufacturing experience and flight heritage and offers a flexible and resilient design to tackle this pioneering mission.”
Redwire’s spacecraft facility in Belgium has more than 50 years of spaceflight heritage developing spacecraft platforms and successfully delivering innovative technology for game-changing ESA programs. Most notably, every spacecraft used for ESA’s Proba missions (Proba-1, Proba-2, Proba-V, and Proba-3) have been developed and integrated at Redwire’s Belgium facility. Collectively, these missions have spent more than 50 years in orbit without failure.
Redwire is also integrating spacecraft to support other critical ESA missions including the In-Orbit Demonstration and Verification (IOD/IOV) mission and the Atmospheric Limb Tracker for Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere (ALTIUS) mission.