Redwire’s Hammerhead spacecraft platform. Photo: Redwire

Redwire has a won a new quantum-secure satellite contract in Europe. It will develop a quantum-secure satellite under the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Quantum Key Distribution Satellite (QKDSat) program, within ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) partnership projects initiative. Redwire announced the contract award, April 2.

For QKDSat, Redwire is part of a multi-country consortium that includes Honeywell Aerospace and aims to provide quantum key distribution via satellite to safeguard against communication data breaches. Honeywell’s U.K. team is leading an industrial consortium that includes: Redwire Space of Belgium; Craft Prospect and British Telecom of the United Kingdom; QTLabs of Austria, Honeywell’s team in Canada, and several key players in Czechia and Switzerland.

Redwire will manufacture and deliver its European-built Hammerhead spacecraft, equipped with the QKD payload and Redwire’s ADPMS-3 suite of avionics. Redwire will also design the QKD payload, which will work alongside the optical terminals developed by Honeywell Canada.

“Quantum secure communications are critical to the future of European autonomy. We are proud to leverage Redwire’s expertise in spacecraft development and avionics to support QKDSat. Satellite quantum key distribution enables truly global, long-distance secure communication, overcoming the range limitations of terrestrial fiber-based quantum networks,” Marc Dielissen, executive vice president of Redwire Europe, said in a statement.