Thales Alenia Space

Thales Alenia Space is a joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (33%). The company is headquartered in Cannes, France. It provides space-based systems, including satellites and ground segments, used for telecommunications, navigation, earth observation, space exploration and scientific purposes. The company is the second largest industrial participant in the International Space Station (ISS), having produced numerous pressurized modules for the European Space Agency's (ESA) including the Cupola, the node modules, Harmony and Tranquility, or the structure of the Columbus laboratory. It is a key contributor to Galileo, a European global satellite navigation system, being responsible for the ground segment in particular. In 2021, the company was also awarded a contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission to build 6 of the 12 new Galileo Second Generation satellites Thales Alenia Space has 17 industrial plants in Europe as well a joint venture in the United States, Leostella. This JV with the Seattle-based company, BlackSky Global, is mostly dedicated to the development of the BlackSky Pathfinder-1 high revisit optical constellation. History Thales Alenia Space arose as a result of the French defense electronics specialist Thales Group deciding to buy out the participation of Alcatel in two joint-ventures between France's Alcatel and Italy's Finmeccanica, Alcatel Alenia Space and Telespazio. Accordingly, on 1 June 2005, Alcatel Alenia Space was established by the merger of Alcatel Space and Alenia Spazio; it was initially owned by Alcatel-Lucent (67%) and Finmeccanica (33%). The creation of the company was concurrent with the creation of Telespazio Holding; this too was a merger of Finmeccanica and Alcatel businesses (Telespazio and Alcatel's Space Services and Operations respectively).