Inside the Thales Alenia Space factory in Cannes, this gave engineers a few headaches. The question was simple, and a little nerve-wracking: during its transfer to the test rig, would the Konnect VHTS, the largest satellite ever made by the Franco-Italian group, manage to cross the curves in the cleanrooms on site? The calculations turned out to be reassuring: the satellite of the operator Eutelsat barely passed, a few centimeters. A few months and one crossing of the Atlantic later, the Konnect VHTS is due to be launched on the night of this Tuesday, September 6 (23:45, Paris time), by an Ariane 5 from Kourou. Due to its size, Konnect VHTS will be the only passenger on the flight, while Ariane 5 usually performs double launches.
What exactly is this satellite Ordered in 2018 by Eutelsat from Thales Alenia Space, the Konnect VHTS is a record-breaking machine. Weighing 6.5 tons, it is 8.8 meters high, the equivalent of a three-story building. Its road transport required the widening of a lane at the Fréjus and Aix-en-Provence tollbooths. But above all it is its unprecedented power of connectivity. With a speed of 500 Gb per second, seven times faster than its smaller brother Konnect, launched in 2020, the satellite will be able to connect 500,000 French and European households to broadband and thus reduce the cost.digital readout in areas where fiber is unlikely to ever reach. In France, bandwidth will be marketed exclusively by Orange subsidiary Nordnet.
The Starlink Scarecrow
The Konnect VHTS, whose price is estimated at 500 million euros, thus emerges as the main French weapon against SpaceX’s Starlink constellation offensive. Like Eutelsat, Elon Musk’s group wants to connect the white areas of Europe to broadband with its constellation of satellites in low orbit (3,000 satellites already launched at an altitude of 550 km). And it is particularly aggressive in France: at the beginning of August, Starlink halved the price of its monthly subscription in France, from 99 to 50 euros per month, which makes France the cheapest area in the world, even if you have to add 480 euros for grounding equipment.
Will Eutelsat be able to compete? Starlink is obviously emerging as the scarecrow of the industry, already with over 400,000 subscribers, and has been launching in clusters of 50-60 satellites on a weekly basis since the beginning of the year. But the French operator has a lot of money in his pocket. The first one: having a satellite, Konnect VHTS, in a geostationary orbit (36,000 km) allows covering the same area all the time, with the satellite having the same orbital speed as the Earth’s rotation speed.
On the other hand, Starlink’s low-orbit satellites fly over areas at high speed, which requires many orbiting vehicles, which must take turns to provide connectivity to subscribers. This imposes a very large number of satellites (42,000 planned for Starlink) and therefore a heavy investment in launches, with satellites having an average lifetime of just five years. Bringing a constellation like Starlink to life, therefore, promises to be ruinous. In a note published in October 2021, Morgan Stanley analysts estimated the cost of the project at $240 billion. According to them, the constellation would only reach profitability in 2030.
multi-orbit offer
Another precious weapon in the hands of Eutelsat: in the process of merging with OneWeb, which already has 428 satellites in orbit, the French operator is also present in the segment of constellations in low orbit. It will thus be able to offer combined offers combining connectivity via satellites in low orbit (which allow low latency times) and via satellites in geostationary orbit (which allow many users to be connected to the same satellite. orbit is the future, assured in July in challenges a space specialist. A multi-orbit fleet would make it possible to offer combined offers, based on satellites from different orbits, which would make it possible to cover all connectivity markets, and have a robust network, where satellites in GEO orbit and in low orbit can carry each other.”
One thing is certain: Eutelsat will have to wait a little longer before putting its new satellite into operation. When it reaches its final orbit and performs the essential tests, commissioning is scheduled for the second half of 2023. By then, competition will have become even fiercer: the future ViaSat 3 satellites built by Boeing for the American operator ViaSat must reach a capacity of 1,000 Gb per second, twice the speed of the French satellite.