SES to build satellites in-house from 2028
What happened
SES chief executive Adel Al-Saleh said the company's own satellite manufacturing facility will be operational by early 2028, with onboard processing units already built in-house. He said SES's combined IRIS² and meoSphere medium-orbit fleets already total 46 satellites, expanding toward 100. A K2 Space partnership will also run three pathfinder missions — one already flying, the next in 2027, a third in 2028 — testing hosted payloads beyond connectivity. Al-Saleh said the old model of designing satellites and outsourcing construction "doesn't work anymore."
Read-across for SES
SES's own CEO is now describing in-house manufacturing as necessary, the same verticalization logic driving Rocket Lab-Iridium and other consolidation-wave players. Owning production could cut SES's reliance on OHB, Thales Alenia Space and K2 Space for future fleets. It also backs SES's pitch as a vertically-integrated space company rather than a legacy GEO operator, just as IRIS² manufacturing and the 2 GHz MSS decision both move forward.
As the brief filed it
[AGE: 8h] SES's own satellite manufacturing facility will be operational by early 2028, CEO Adel Al-Saleh said, as the company's combined IRIS²/meoSphere fleet grows from 46 toward 100 satellites.