NATO has awarded GovSat a ground surveillance contract. Photo: GovSat

[Via Satellite 11-09-2016] GovSat, a public-private partnership between the Luxembourg Government and SES, has secured a long-term commercial satellite communications contract to support the operational phase of NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS). The contract is for an end-to-end service and includes the delivery of satellite capacity in commercial Ku-band, largely coming from the SES fleet, as well as associated capacity management services.

These services support the command and control, and sensor data communications required by NATO Global Hawk vehicles over the AGS operational area. GovSat’s first satellite, GovSat 1, is currently under construction and scheduled for launch in 2017.