Photo: Thales Group

[Via Satellite 03-13-2015] France’s Direction Générale de L’Armement (DGA) has selected Thales and Airbus Defence and Space to work together as co-prime contractors for a trio of military satellites. The companies were awarded to build the Capacité de Renseignement Electromagnétique Spatiale (CERES) or Space Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) capacity, which will use three satellites in close proximity to each other for the detection and location of ground radio-telecommunications and radar signals.

The DGA tasked Airbus Defence and Space with building the space segment for each satellite, and Thales with the payloads. The French space agency CNES is providing a ground control segment and the user ground segment, which Thales will use for satellite programming and data processing.