Europe buys much of its satellite imagery from systems it does not control. It is now paying two industrial teams to design something it would own.
Europe’s space agency has split the design work between competing consortia. ICEYE and Leonardo will each lead a team drafting the architecture for an EU-owned imagery service, under parallel study contracts.
The target is the Earth Observation Governmental Service, or EOGS, which the European Commission plans to launch in 2028 under its next budget framework. The studies cover the whole chain, from what users need through the satellites, ground stations and data distribution.
ICEYE’s group is called ARISE, short for Architecture for Resilient and Federated ISR in Sovereign Europe. The design work runs 20 months under the European Resilience from Space initiative, and sits in Element 1 of ESA’s ERS-EO program, agreed at the November 2025 ministerial.
ESA calls ERS-EO dual-use. The aim is to give the EU and its member states secure imagery for security and defence decisions, including crisis response and geopolitical shocks, and to close European gaps in very-high-resolution optical and radar sensing.
Speaking at World Space Business Week in Paris, ESA Earth observation director Simonetta Cheli called the contracts an early milestone toward independent European capabilities for security and crisis response.
