European satellite firm SES has announced plans to deploy its meoSphere satellite network and will partner with K2 Space for the rollout.

SES’s meoSphere is a “next-generation” medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite network, designed to boost the company’s MEO network capacity. The network will orbit at around 8,000km (4,971 miles) above Earth. Each satellite will deliver 20kW of power.

The satellite firm said it would work in close collaboration with K2 Space, pairing its own software-defined payloads with an initial 28 high-power satellite platforms developed by K2 Space.

According to SES, this partnership will afford it “tighter control over key supply-chain elements” and compress the build timeline for the network. It said this would allow it to manage schedules and costs, and lay a foundation for future scalability.

During the next three years, SES will launch a series of MEO “pathfinder” missions with K2, testing and validating the satellite bus and SES payload components in orbit. The satellite firm said that each mission would carry “progressively greater payload complexity.”

“Space is the invisible backbone of the global data economy and national security,” said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES. “Together with K2 Space and other space partners, we’re building meoSphere as essential infrastructure – constructed faster, designed to handle massive data demands globally, and built to support the secure, resilient sovereign networks that our global government allies depend on.”

Karan Kunjur, co-founder and CEO of K2 Space, added: “The meoSphere partnership with SES is a clear validation of K2’s mission to build the highest power satellites on orbit to realize our partners’ and customers’ ambitions in space.

“We’re incredibly proud to partner in this effort with SES, a longstanding and forward-leaning space industry leader who shares our commitment to building new, efficient space architectures at speed and scale.”

SES said the initiative is included in its previously announced full-year 2026 capex.

The satellite firm announced it had begun work on meoSphere in September last year. Al-Saleh described the network as having a new design philosophy: “iterative, agile, and developmental.”

At the same time, the company announced an initial partnership with K2.

K2 Space was founded in 2022 by Karan Kunjur and his brother Neel Kunjur, former SpaceX engineers. The company launched its first satellite, Heritage, in January 2025, demonstrating critical subsystems in low-Earth orbit.

The company has plans to launch its second satellite, Gravitas, this month on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

SES currently operates two other MEO networks, O3b and O3b mPower.

Founded in 2007, O3b Networks launched its first satellite in 2013, with the last batch going up in 2019. Today, 20 of the 700kg Thales Alenia Space-made Ka-Band machines are in orbit.

SES took a 30 percent stake in O3b in 2009 for $75 million, joining the likes of Google as an investor. It subsequently raised its stake in the company to 49.1 percent before acquiring the remainder of the firm for $730m in 2016.

Plans for SES’ subsequent O3b mPower fleet were originally announced in 2017, and services launched in 2024. Set to total 13 satellites, each 1,700kg Ka-band unit can provide up to 5,000 beams per satellite, providing from 50Mbps up to 10Gbps.