June 6, 2023 – ST Engineering iDirect, a global leader in satellite communications, and satellite manufacturer Airbus Defence and Space, have entered into a strategic partnership to enable tighter space to ground integration, and promote technology and vision for the future. The partnership, which comes at a time when the satellite world is evolving to software-defined satellites and the emergence of NGSO constellations, will ensure satellite operators have access to the benefits of tightly integrated space and ground solutions to address their future network architecture and service requirements. Both parties will draw on their long history of collaboration, experience and proven technology to focus on areas of innovation and that will benefit satellite operators’ time-to-market. Areas of focus will include the fully digitized Onesat GEO satellites; NGSO constellation programs; the identification of existing and emerging use cases; the corresponding end-to-end solution architecture and future standards. With customers focused on the reduction of costs yet with the expectation of high performance, Airbus has designed its satellite portfolio to reduce in-orbit costs, time to orbit and to deliver reconfigurable and flexible on-orbit solutions. ST Engineering iDirect’s high-performance, highly flexible ground segment technology meets these requirements.