In a surprise move, Spain’s Startical j-v of Indra and Spanish air-navigation authority Enaire has returned to Sweden’s small-satellite builder GomSpace to build at least the initial satellites of the planned Startical air-traffic-management constellation.

Just over a year ago the GomSpace contract was unexpectedly cancelled. The news propelled a significant uplift to GomSpace’s share price (up 52 per cent) on the company’s Nasdaq listing.

As well as the cancellation of the contract, Spain said it would not pay for work already carried out under the contract.

The dispute was over cost increases levied by GomSpace and resulted in GomSpace’s CEO losing his job and a 30 per cent reduction in the company’s headcount.

A December 11th statement to shareholders from GomSpace said the contract has been restarted and that it “will reuse the work performed for the previously suspended program to support Startical to perform the European ECHOES demonstration and settle disputes.”

The EU is committed to awarding €15 million into Startical.

GomSpace added that work on the ECHOES satellite would now start immediately in readiness for launch as planned in 2025.

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Ariane 6 launch campaign underway
2. Virgin Galactic in stock split
3. Thuraya-3 suffers major problem
4. AST SpaceMobile hit by Class Action
5. Optimism under threat at SES
6. Rivada visits Terran Orbital’s manufacturing HQ
7. Avanti wins spectrum debt obligation case
8. SpaceX breaks records for re-use launchers
9. IRIS2 already in trouble?

Categories: Blogs, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: gomspace, satellite, spain