Luxembourg Government, SES to Develop & Launch New Defence Satellite for GovSat

On Thursday 24 July 2025, the Luxembourg government and SES announced their plan to develop a second satellite for GovSat (LuxGovSat SA).

GovSat is the public-private partnership and 50/50 joint venture between the Luxembourg government and SES that aims to provide "secure, reliable and accessible" satellite communication services for governments.

GovSat-2 will be positioned over the European satellite arc. It will join GovSat-1 in augmenting reliable connectivity services for government customers over the region. Thales Alenia Space will build the satellite on its Spacebus 4000B2 platform.

Since launching in 2018, the joint venture's first defence satellite, GovSat-1, operated by GovSat from a secure missions operations centre in Luxembourg, has supported the Luxembourg Directorate of Defence, EU and NATO nations, the US Department of Defense and other governmental users. It has been providing connectivity for theatres of operation, interconnection of institutional as well as defence sites, border control, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance and various other types of communications for air, land and maritime missions.

The "state-of-the-art" GovSat-2 satellite will extend the coverage and scale of GovSat, and is designed to address the needs of defence users at the highest Security and Service Assurance Level. The satellite will add new ultra-high frequency (UHF) channels, X- and military Ka-band, and will include other security features such as dedicated hardening, an advanced anti-jamming system and embedded geolocation.

The investment in GovSat-2 is said to be in line with SES's stated financial policy criteria and also in line with prior combined company CAPEX guidance. The satellite will be co-funded by SES and the Luxembourg government, subject to approval of the corresponding draft law by the Chamber of Deputies (parliament).

"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," stated Yuriko Backes, Luxembourg's Minister of Defence. "With GovSat-2, Luxembourg will once again demonstrate its significant impact in the field of space".

"With geopolitical shifts and an increased need for scalable national security and defence capabilities, we are seeing growing demand for secure, reliable geostationary (GEO) connectivity with comprehensive coverage across Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, the Mediterranean and the Baltic Seas," said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES. "As governments across Europe look to bolster their sovereign satellite communications for defence and intelligence needs, GovSat-2 gives GovSat additional MILSATCOM capacity to address this strategic area of growth."

Patrick Biewer, CEO of GovSat, commented: "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."