On March 27, 2023 Thales Alenia Space, the joint enterprise between Thales Group, the french multinational aerospace company and Leonardo the Italian multinational aerospace company, just won a contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to supply an initial batch of six plus one small satellites.

These satellites are to be part of  the Italian Earth Observation Constellation (IRIDE). IIRDE  is a government funded project, operated by ESA and the Italian Space Agency. The programme encompasses a series of low Earth Orbit satellites, featuring different sensing instruments, dedicated to serve the Italian public administration through a wide range of frequencies and spatial resolutions Earth observations which can potentially aid with monitoring critical infrastructure, hydrogeological instabilities and numerous other applications.

"The Italian government has entrusted us with the task of implementing this particularly challenging and innovative program, and with the signature of this contract, in addition to those signed in the past weeks, we are close to the full definition of the IRIDE constellation and in line with the roadmap that will allow ESA to reach the first milestone of the program, scheduled for the end of March" said Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programs at ESA.

Figure 1: Illustrating ESA's  Sentinel-1 satellite which carries a 12m long synthetic aperture radar to be used in six of the seven satellites built.