Airbus wins ESA contract to build Aeolus-2 wind-sensing satellite
Airbus Defence and Space · European Space Agency
ESA and EUMETSAT contract Airbus to build a successor to the Aeolus wind-lidar satellite as an operational service.
what happened
Airbus Defence and Space signed an initial contract with ESA on July 2, 2026 at ECSAT in Harwell, UK, to design and build the Aeolus-2 Doppler wind lidar satellite for ESA and EUMETSAT, per Airbus's own release and European Security & Defence. Aeolus-2 will orbit at 450 km, deliver wind-profile data within 120 minutes of measurement, and add an aerosol detector not carried by the original Aeolus (2018-2023); neither release states a contract value.
why it matters
It converts Aeolus's research-mission wind-lidar technology, credited with a 4% improvement in numerical weather forecasting accuracy, into an operational service Airbus will build and ESA/EUMETSAT will run, a template for turning single-satellite science demonstrators into recurring commercial-build programs.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- Airbus Defence and Space, European Space Agency
- Category
- procurement
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 3 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-02
- Published
- 2026-09-01 12:16 UTC