Russian export credit agency EXIAR looks set to back its first space project as it considers supporting Dauria Aerospace’s around US$200m deal to build two satellites.
Dauria, which has facilities in Russia, Germany and the US, recently announced…
Russian export credit agency EXIAR looks set to back its first space project as it considers supporting Dauria Aerospace’s around US$200m deal to build two satellites.
Dauria, which has facilities in Russia, Germany and the US, recently announced plans to construct two all-electric Ku-band telecoms birds for Indian satellite service provider Aniara SpaceCom.
The spacecraft aim to be launched on the same Indian Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) in late 2017, when they will look for ways to complement the coverage of other satellites already in orbit.
Alexey Tyupanov, EXIAR’s head of business development, told SatelliteFinance that the Russian ECA could back the entire project despite it being developed for an Indian rocket.
“We are not limited vis-à -vis a minimum threshold for Russian content in the deal, so depending on the case we can consider supporting the whole transaction including non-Russian content,” said Tyupanov.
He added it would be EXIAR’s first space project if a deal was approved. It would come a year after the ECA announced plans to aggressively support Russia’s space industry, primarily through helping its domestic launcher International Launch Services win more commercial contracts.
Raghu Das, Aniara’s founder and CEO, expects EXIAR to provide up to 85% of export financing of the approximate US$200m turnkey cost, which includes launch and insurance. This will be backed by nearly 100% off-take by its customers, according to Das. The company has yet to make a formal application to the Russian ECA, and has just started seeking proposals from insurers.
The Indian group was formed in 2001 to advise telecoms and technology businesses on expanding their activities, particularly in the satellite sector, across emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. While primarily focused on aggregating capacity on existing satellites or adding small incremental capacity blocks to planned third party spacecraft, this the first set of birds that Aniara has procured itself.
Das said Dauria’s lightweight satellites, each carrying 12-16 Ku-band transponders, will respond to rising demand to “exploit fragmented spectrum gaps in the already congested geostationary orbital arc”, as well as helping to commercialise India’s new GLSV Mark 2 rocket.
“We believe the roll-out of this efficient small satellite platform would be an ideal solution for India and other South-Asian countries in providing made-to-order satellite capacity to bulk users,” he added.
He declined to disclose specific customers or the orbital slots that its satellites will target.
“As a general rule though, we will work with existing global and regional operators to utilise unused spectrum and, where feasible, add additional capacity to the benefit of both the operator and our customers,” he said.
Munich-headquartered Dauria, which has tapped Spanish technology company Elecnor Deimos to help design the small satellite platform, is also under contract to build two small remote sensing birds called MKA-N for Russian space agency Roscosmos.
