- Newsroom
- Company News
- How ESA helps SWISSto12 shape the future of communications in Space
How ESA helps SWISSto12 shape the future of communications in Space
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the European Space Agency (ESA), a milestone that invites both celebration and reflection for the future. Over the last five decades, ESA has been instrumental in shaping Europe’s presence in space: from developing launch vehicles to landmark scientific missions, supporting Earth observation, navigation, exploration, and telecommunications programmes. Another important mission at ESA is to enable commercial innovation and enhance Europe’s competitiveness in space telecommunications market.
Throughout SWISSto12’s journey, we have witnessed and participated in this evolution firsthand. When we first partnered with ESA 10 years ago, our initial goal was specific: apply advanced 3D printing technology to radiofrequency (RF) products and antennas for satellite communications. The collaboration grew with the scope of our projects, and ESA helped us validate new products, develop flight-ready subsystems, and ultimately take the leap into developing and demonstrating in orbit our geostationary (GEO) telecommunication satellites, called HummingSat.
HummingSat is a new class of small geostationary satellites developed in collaboration with ESA, that has already secured multiple commercial orders with leading satellite operators Intelsat and Viasat/Inmarsat and Asia Pacific direct-to-device operator Astrum. These satellites fill a previously unaddressed gap in the GEO market. With their smaller size, lower unit cost yet high performance, they offer a new option for operators and nation-states to invest in a more targeted and/or incremental approach to their satellite fleet and business cases.
A successful collaboration via an ESA Partnership Project
SWISSto12’s journey with ESA demonstrates another successful story of an ARTES Partnership Project – where industry and ESA enable innovation whilst providing commercialisation opportunity to the private partner. ESA plays a catalytic role: reducing the technical risk of early-stage technologies, giving confidence to investors, and allowing commercial companies to deploy competitive and qualified product lines.
“The ARTES Partnership Project framework is particularly well-suited for building spacecraft product lines like HummingSat, where rapid design and development iterations and market alignment are key,” says Christine Miquel, ESA’s HummingSat Project Manager.
Space sovereignty while fostering collaboration
Space has recently re-emerged as a domain of strategic significance. Civil, commercial, and government needs overlap across satellite infrastructure – whether for climate monitoring, connectivity and secure communications, or emergency services.
At the heart of this is a growing realisation: countries must be able to independently develop and operate systems across the space value chain. As a founding ESA member and home to a thriving aerospace sector, Switzerland provides components to nearly every satellite launched in Europe and North America. But Swiss companies like ours must evolve upstream from product and component suppliers to mission and system leaders: a transformation ESA helped us achieve along with our European and international partners and a talented multicultural team.
“When the project began in March 2022, the HummingSat Prime had a team of about 10,” says Christine Miquel. “Today, the industrial workforce has grown to over 200. We work hand-in-hand with the industrial team; with ESA contributing its management and technical competence, one of our most experienced engineers being embedded with the industrial team in Switzerland.”
Commercial agility meets institutional trust
One of ESA’s greatest strengths lies in its ability to function as a neutral, pan-European platform that bridges nations, operators, and commercial ventures. As the space economy grows more competitive and interconnected, neutrality and trustworthiness are crucial.
“ESA’s Partnership Projects offer a proven framework,” says Christine Miquel, “federating industry around large-scale programmes, de-risking innovation, and constituting a trusted partner for investors and governments alike. ESA shares development risk, while companies like SWISSto12 take on commercial risk – a formula that makes ambitious projects viable.” For SWISSto12, ESA’s commercial partnership approach has been essential to secure its first contracts with prestigious customers. SWISSto12 is now building satellites that are lighter, faster to deploy, and easier to produce – designed for use across media broadcasting to emergency communications, satellite enabled positioning services, broadband connectivity or secure government networks.
Looking ahead: the next 50 years
For rapidly scaling manufacturers and system integrators like SWISSto12, ESA has already shown what’s possible when institutional support meets industrial ambition.
“SWISSto12 embodies the agility and forward-thinking mindset of ESA’s new way of cooperating with Industry” says Christine Miquel. “In a challenging geopolitical context, HummingSat offers an attractive solution for the worldwide satellite communication market and for Europe’s space resilience and autonomy.”
ESA’s 50th anniversary is more than a commemoration – it’s a pivotal moment. The future of space is not only about prestige or exploration, but about innovation, competitiveness, resilience and international collaboration.
As SWISSto12 continues implementing solutions for commercial and sovereign space infrastructure, we’re proud to have developed into a trusted new satellite prime contractor leading a European (and Canadian) supply chain, with ESA as an enabler.