ESA opens tender to repurpose Gateway's Lunar Link comms module
ESA is soliciting feasibility studies to turn its Gateway-built Lunar Link payload into a standalone lunar comms satellite.
what happened
ESA issued an invitation to tender on July 27 for feasibility studies on repurposing Lunar Link, a communications payload built for NASA's now-paused Gateway station, as a standalone cislunar communications satellite, per SpaceNews. ESA plans to award up to two parallel Phase A/B1 study contracts, each worth up to 3 million euros (about $3.4 million), capped at 12 months and required to support a fourth-quarter 2029 launch. Thales Alenia Space France, which built Lunar Link, is a mandatory subcontractor on the studies, with at least 750,000 euros of each contract's budget reserved for its work.
why it matters
The tender guarantees Thales Alenia Space a subcontract role and gives the winning prime early standing on hardware that could feed into Moonlight, ESA's planned lunar communications and navigation constellation, rather than letting a nearly-finished payload sit idle after NASA paused Gateway deployment in March. For companies chasing ESA lunar-infrastructure work, it is a concrete, dated procurement opportunity with a stated budget, not just a planning exercise.
for who
European space primes and lunar-lander operators tracking ESA's post-Gateway-pause lunar comms plans
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- ESA, Thales Alenia Space
- Category
- procurement
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 3 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-27
- Published
- 2026-07-29 09:39 UTC