A consortium of Belgian companies led by engineering firm Spacebel has won a contract to build a remote sensing satellite for the Vietnamese government.
Worth €62.6m, it is Belgium’s first commercial satellite contract from outside Europe and is…
A consortium of Belgian companies led by engineering firm Spacebel has won a contract to build a remote sensing satellite for the Vietnamese government.
Worth €62.6m, it is Belgium’s first commercial satellite contract from outside Europe and is being supported by Belgian export credit agency ONDD.
Around a third of this cost is backed by a state to state loan, with the rest coming from commercial credit via BNP Paribas and Belgian bank Belfius, previously known as Dexia Bank Belgium.
Spacebel managing director Thierry Du Pré-Werson told SatelliteFinance that the group was also in talks to secure similar Spacebel-led projects in South America, the Middle East and South Asia.
The Vietnamese satellite has been named VNREDSat-1b (Vietnam Natural Resources, Environment & Disaster Monitoring satellite) and is slated to be launched in 2017.
Based on the European Space Agency’s PROBA satellite platform, VNREDSat-1b will be placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit for a five year observation mission. The satellite will enable Vietnam to strengthen its autonomy in monitoring environmental impacts such as deforestation, river and maritime pollution, flooding and agricultural activities.
As well as Spacebel, a software engineering company operating in the space and Earth monitoring application sectors, the industrial consortium comprises space optical systems specialist AMOS, software and hardware designer Deltatec, small satellite developer Qinetiq Space – which is also the prime contractor for PROBA – University of Liège spin-out the Space Centre of Liege and VITO, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research.
In addition, the project also includes a training programme, in partnership with the University of Liège, intended for the Vietnamese engineers in charge of the satellite’s data reception and analysis.
For future projects, Du Pré-Werson said that the company is also open to platforms other than PROBA, although this is still preferred because of the amount the Belgian government has already invested in it.
