Sanders: The significance of it is the structure of the agreement itself. My understanding is that, if it is not the very first, it is one of the first times a large project of this kind will be performed in this PPP form. I don’t think we were surprised it received ESA budgetary approval at the recent ESA ministerial conference in Naples because there was a lot of groundwork done to make sure that happened and that we, OHB and ESA supported the initiative. It is clearly significant for our industry to have this relationship with ESA, and a manufacturer who, to date has not had much experience in commercial ventures. It is an interesting partnership. The budget that has been approved to this shows the importance of this project to industry in Europe. If you look at it more broadly, the reasons why we wanted to get involved were that we want to see more competition in the satellite manufacturing business, particularly in this size of bus, and we want to see more competition in this size of bus with electric propulsion specifically. This is an opportunity to try and develop that with ESA backing.

Sanders: We are a European based company. We have a good relationship with ESA. It is a good opportunity to take advantage of that and try to help to develop competition in our suppliers, something which is clearly in our interest. Hopefully, in the future, OHB becomes another commercial satellite manufacturer who we can turn to for certain types of satellites and such a smaller bus with electric propulsion capability would be of interest to us. I don’t think any of us are under the illusion that this will happen overnight. It is a challenge to become an established manufacturer in this market. However, we believe that industry will support additional competition and that is why we are doing this. You would have to ask OHB, but I would suggest there are benefits for them to be involved with an operator like SES: we have experience of buying quality satellites from a number of manufacturers; that is something that they will look to leverage over this project. It is also important to state the importance of the strong relationship SES has with the Luxembourg government and its support of the national and European space industry; the Luxembourg government deserves much credit for the support they have shown with regards to this Electra project both directly with SES and through their participation and leadership in ESA.

Sanders: We have already completed a lot of work to put the proposal to the meeting in Naples. We’ve had numerous meetings with OHB to scope out and understand what they propose. We are basically contracting with ESA as the project lead and OHB will be our prime sub-contractor for this project, if you will. We have already talked through how we see this kind of program running. OHB are more familiar with having a direct relationship with ESA on scientific programs, so this will also be a new challenge for them. We are primarily concerned that at the end of this project, there will be a viable product that can be sold repeatedly, built repeatedly, for a commercially viable price to a commercially viable schedule. Straight after the New Year, we will be kicking off the whole program and setting up the relationships we need going forward to manage this project. We have meetings next week with OHB and ESA to flesh that out further in terms of the choices of suppliers, key requirements and going into greater details about what the deliverables will be at the end of the project etc. However, there is a large proportion of R&D going into this project and we won’t be taking anything for granted, as there is a mutual unfamiliarity with this specific project structure

Sanders: At one of our shareholders meetings SES, CTO Martin Halliwell spoke on this. We deal with a lot of innovation topics. We are not a manufacturer, but it is in our best interests to know what is out there and which technologies we could benefit from if they were further developed. When we talk to satellite manufacturers and their equipment providers, we actively encourage them to look at technologies such as electric propulsion. I don’t doubt that other companies will be looking to adopt such innovative technologies as well. I know for a fact that other satellite manufacturers are looking to develop this as an offering in their catalogue of capabilities because they know their customers want it. However, it isn’t going to happen overnight. The drive to full electric propulsion missions is going to take some time. You have to get comfortable with the technology and develop the concepts for different missions; there is a mission schedule difference to take into consideration. All of which issues are going to be factors and need to be planned in. I think industry will look at this more and more going forward though.

Sanders: At some level many of the satellite operators, ourselves included, already have some form of electrically enhanced/electric propulsion so full electric propulsion missions are a logical next step.  It is not at all beyond the realms of possibility that we might do something in the future. There are a number of companies that are looking towards full electric propulsion solutions, both for small bus and large buses, and for good reason. The economics make complete sense. We have made investments with SpaceX, and that is an interesting coupling, as that offers interesting opportunities. Electric propulsion is a bit of a no-brainer going forward as it allows you to put so much more revenue generating payload mass in orbit for a given price, or reduces the price of a given payload. This is just an obvious direction for industry to head in.

Sanders: It is a natural progression for technology in orbit. The industry evolved from spin-stabilized satellites to three-axis stabilized satellites; we also evolved from smaller satellites to bigger satellites to take advantage of the economies of scale there. Many underlying technologies had to evolve in order to support those higher level evolvements. I think the electric propulsion technology is mature enough now that people are comfortable enough in adopting it, and we are confident it will work. When you couple that with some of the launch capabilities that are out there now, it is just something that satellite operators will latch onto; otherwise, we will be at a competitive disadvantage. At the end of the day, it comes down to how much it costs to carry a bit of data through our satellites in orbit. Anything we can do to drive that cost down, while maintaining necessary performance and risk profiles, is something that we have a responsibility to pursue.