On 17 September 2026, the European Space Agency awarded parallel study contracts to two competing consortia, led by Finland's ICEYE and Italy's Leonardo, to design the architecture of the EU's future Earth Observation Governmental Service (EOGS).
According to ESA, EOGS will provide "secure, reliable, timely, persistent and targeted" space-based Earth observation data for security and defence decisions. The studies fall under the EU-funded European Resilience from Space for Earth Observation programme. Each contract runs 12 months, with an option to extend by eight.
The design covers the space segment, ground infrastructure, data processing and governance, feeding into EOGS deployment under the EU's 2028–2034 budget framework.
ICEYE leads the ARISE consortium, with Indra Space, Rheinmetall and HISDESAT as core partners and nine further companies including Creotech Instruments, SafranAI and OroraTech.
ICEYE CEO and Co-Founder Rafał Modrzewski said the study would help "define Europe's future architecture for resilience and security”. He added that ICEYE is “proud to work closely with European institutions to help build an environment in which Europe’s technology companies can scale in Europe”.
"These two contracts are an important early milestone to construct and define the space architecture," said Simonetta Cheli, ESA's director of Earth Observation Programmes.