Indra Space presents its plan to boost its standing in the European Union in partnership with Spanish companies

Indra Space is presenting its project to enhance its standing in the EU in partnership with Spanish companies at the Mobile World Congress. It’s the first European company to adapt to the transformation of the aerospace sector by integrating the entire value chain, from construction to the operation and use of satellite. These end-to-end capabilities enable it to better adapt to the needs of its clients and guarantee secure communications in critical areas, while preserving European sovereignty and ensuring a significant dual civil and military impact. 

In recent years the aerospace industry has established itself as a resilient and secure telecommunications infrastructure. The MWC has therefore brought together all of the companies in the sector for the first time to highlight its importance. Within this framework, Indra Space is presenting an ensemble of projects designed to guarantee the security and privacy of governmental communications and those of large companies.

With the integration of Hispasat, Indra is strengthening its involvement in IRIS², the European Commission’s flagship project aimed at ensuring the secure communications of its member States. The program, endowed with over €10 billion, will lead to the creation of a constellation of 290 satellites in low and medium orbit to guarantee secure 5G connectivity and EU’s digital sovereignty.

Hispasat has also made technological solutions available to companies whose scope had previously been more restricted to ensure the security of their communications and their resilience while offering full privacy guarantees. The first proposal is the multi-orbit solution, which is designed to guarantee connectivity with satellites operating in different orbits, intelligently managing the network to provide its customers with a service with the highest levels of quality, efficiency, and resilience.

The second one involves private cellular networks, an essential solution for companies and institutions seeking greater security and privacy in their communications. Unlike public networks, these infrastructures can define a customized mobile network architecture which, thanks to the global coverage of the satellites, can be deployed anywhere, regardless of the terrestrial connectivity. This solution is therefore ideal for improving efficiency, coordination, and communication in industries that work in remote and dispersed locations (mining and oil & gas, maritime, logistics, port and agricultural, etc.).

Security to combat quantum cyber attacks

Hispasat operates at the forefront of the development of quantum space communications. For this purpose, it has coordinated 19 Spanish companies and institutions so as to anticipate the emergence of quantum computers, which are set to lead to a paradigm shift in secure communications, given that attackers will be able to decrypt current-day encryptions with them in a matter of seconds. It’s the world’s first QKD (quantum key distribution) system that uses a geostationary satellite. This technology is able to guarantee the protection of governments, critical infrastructures, and strategic communications in the new digital era.

Specifically, QKD-GEO is developing a system that can send information with the required guarantees in the environments of civil and military governmental communications, critical infrastructure management, applications and services of economic, environmental, and technological interest, and large corporations. Quantum key distribution by means of an optical communications system can check with certainty whether they have been intercepted, as their integrity is constantly verified thanks to the quantum properties of the photons.

At present, technology doesn’t allow the use of fiber-optic-based connections to establish quantum communications across a distance of just over 100 kilometers. Quantum key distribution therefore constitutes a revolutionary breakthrough that can lead to fully secure communications resistant to the calculations of quantum computing.

Hispasat is also leading Q-Design, the first project in the world that will combine quantum key distribution via geostationary and low orbit satellites and terrestrial infrastructures. This will enable its users to securely exchange keys through any of these channels, depending on the conditions required at any given time.

In this way, with the integration of Hispasat, Indra Group consolidates its leadership in secure communications and quantum technologies—an area in which the company has already demonstrated its capabilities through strategic initiatives such as DISCRETION, funded by the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP), and through its participation in the international REPMUS exercises, reinforcing its role within NATO cooperation frameworks and in the development of military use cases for QKD.

Commitment to European space innovation

The company also plays a key role in Celeste, the new European program for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services in low Earth orbit (LEO) driven by the European Space Agency (ESA). The company provides its VORAX satellite platform, a critical component serving as the technological foundation of the satellites for the demonstration mission scheduled for 2027.

Celeste is the first European low Earth navigation project, and it will constitute a milestone in the evolution of these capabilities on the continent. It will test state-of-the-art technologies and incorporate new frequency bands to complement the Galileo Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) system, expanding coverage, strengthening the service’s resilience, and delivering new capabilities and better performances.

HispasatLab, innovation in Catalonia

Unlike the previous generations, 5G is the first mobile network standard to include a satellite as one of the telecommunications infrastructures comprising it since its origin. Since 2020, Hispasat has been a member of the 3GPP working groups set up for the above and highly active in projects related to this technology. Hispasat has created an innovation area for development in collaboration with the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya aimed at validating advanced satellite connectivity technologies. This area drives the development and testing of 5G NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) geared towards key use cases, including connectivity in remote areas, support for governmental communications, recovering services in the wake of emergencies and natural disasters, connectivity for air and maritime mobility, and bolstering the resilience of critical networks.