Atle Woello interview examines European industry role in space sovereignty drive

An interview episode released by SpaceNews on Nov. 12, 2026, paired journalist Jason Rainbow with Atle Woello, chief executive and senior vice president of Kongsberg NanoAvionics’ space systems and surveillance business unit. The source frames the discussion as a look at how industry helps Europe tighten control over its own space capabilities. The conversation addressed how space fits into defense networks that link across domains, and where European industry sits within the continent’s political and fundraising push for sovereignty, independence and resilience in space. The episode carried sponsorship from Xiphos Systems.

Xiphos Systems dates to 1996 and operates from Montreal, producing compact embedded computing hardware for spacecraft and aerospace work. The company specializes in commercial off-the-shelf processing platforms that merge processors, programmable logic, storage, networking and radio frequency into designs emphasizing minimal size, weight, power and cost. The firm says it has handed over more than one thousand processor cards, and its customer support covers system integration through deployment. A company boilerplate describing Xiphos’s work and history carries the sponsorship notice.

European governments are seeking greater control over satellite access, and demand for sovereign satellite capability is increasing. Executives and policymakers raised the issue at an industry conference in Paris, and World Space Business Week, held Sept. 14 to 17, 2026, made it a central theme along with the Space Defense & Security Summit side event. European states are moving toward independent options because of Washington’s limits on Starlink in Ukraine, the March 2025 cutoff of U.S. intelligence sharing with Kyiv and imagery restrictions over the Middle East in 2026. The conflict in Ukraine showed how vital space data is for modern defense and revealed Western militaries’ dependence on American suppliers for critical space capabilities.

Guillaume de la Brosse, who leads the European Commission’s defense policy and innovation unit, called for quicker development of European-owned sovereign space assets backed by EU-based industry under continuous European control. He called sovereignty a prerequisite for cooperation and said reducing dependencies will define the agenda in coming years. Jean-Baptiste Paing, a deputy director in France’s Directorate General for Armament responsible for intelligence and space operations, described sovereignty as the ultimate guarantee of freedom to assess and act during conflict. He cited past trouble securing commercial satellite communications over Afghanistan and commercial imaging during Middle East crises as proof.

The European Commission wants cooperation, including NATO space-security talks, to stay standard practice, yet de la Brosse said cooperation is seriously challenged and Europeans must invest more in their own freedom of action. He also cautioned against renationalizing space policy and said EU budget incentives should push member states to coordinate spending and pool space resources instead of building separate constellations.

Germany plans to spend €35 billion on sovereign military space capabilities by 2030, a move that has raised concern in some EU states about unilateral action. Paing described the decision as legitimate and said it should make Europe stronger overall. Paing said he cannot speak for sovereignty without recognizing the same capacity in other countries and believes the investment should be put at the service of building a stronger Europe.

A Novaspace forecast projects that defense intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellite totals will climb more than fourfold by 2035, labeling the category a priority for most countries. Novaspace organized the Paris conferences where sovereignty came up repeatedly, and executives there said the shift to New Space has reduced launcher and satellite costs, enabling European governments to pursue sovereignty with limited budgets. Vincent Dedieu, chief executive of ArianeGroup unit Sodern, said New Space enables countries without space industries to build sovereign capacity, and Sodern is helping Poland, Bulgaria and Finland catch up in defense and commercial space. Noam Segal of ImageSat International said the lower cost point for owning space assets makes the drive for sovereign capacity a strong future trend.

Julia Gottfriedsen, chief technology officer at Constellr, described a fundamental shift in how industry and governments manage space, pointing to Germany’s purchase of ICEYE and Rheinmetall data for its Lithuania brigade under a service-level agreement that transfers data-supply risk to the companies. She said governments are also seeking to buy their own infrastructure in addition to those commercial arrangements. Executives from Planet Labs, BlackSky and Vantor said their satellites can be provided without ITAR restrictions, and several pointed to European operations or manufacturing outside the United States. ITAR is the name for U.S. export-control rules.

HawkEye 360 chief John Serafini pointed to partnerships with Italy’s Leonardo and Czechia’s ERA plus a Luxembourg unit as evidence that his company can meet European military sovereignty requirements however customers want sovereignty provided. U.S.-based geospatial intelligence firms are stressing ITAR-free delivery and European presence to address sovereignty concerns. Planet Labs inaugurated a Berlin facility, and Robbie Schingler, the company’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, said the first German-built Pelican satellite should exit production by the end of the year and fly on a German-built Isar Aerospace rocket from Norway in the early part of next year. The Berlin opening took place during the same week as the conference coverage.

Schingler said linking systems for one-off missions creates choice, which he characterized as a form of sovereignty. He called assurance and control one element of sovereignty, with choice as the other. ICEYE chief Rafal Modrzewski said the firm is building a German-owned factory in western Germany for a German order of 40 satellites and keeping the full supply chain in-country, though he added the deal needs to be large enough to justify the spending. For smaller ICEYE customers such as Sweden, Finland, Poland and the Netherlands, the company offers a software layer that lets nations federate assets tactically and borrow capabilities to cover areas of interest.

Nicolas Lefort, head of new markets at MBDA, said France’s Toutatis project to place a maneuverable satellite into low-Earth orbit is still awaiting a launcher. François Lombard of Airbus Defence and Space said he is optimistic that new European firms can lift one-ton payloads into low-Earth orbit, pointing to a recent Isar Aerospace success and the forthcoming arrival of ArianeGroup’s MaiaSpace.

The EU Space Act, the European Defence Industrial Strategy and rising national defense budgets together make up what the source calls the most coherent European sovereign-space funding context in decades. For two decades, European space was dominated by ESA-coordinated science missions, Arianespace launch and few European commercial firms competing against U.S. and Chinese structural advantages, while the new policy establishes an explicit European preference or requirement for European-built systems in sovereign and defense contexts. The EU Space Act is moving through European institutions to establish a single commercial-space regulatory framework covering safety, debris, sustainability and competitiveness against non-European operators. The Act indicates that European institutions view commercial space as a strategic policy domain requiring coordinated European action instead of regulation by individual member states.

Adopted in 2024, the European Defence Industrial Strategy channels European Defence Fund and national defense money toward European-made systems and includes European-preference rules in cases where dependence on non-European suppliers creates sovereignty risk. EDIS covers space capabilities such as space domain awareness, secure communications, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, and reentry and recovery. Space domain awareness means tracking objects and activity in orbit.

SpaceX Dragon controls low-Earth-orbit downmass under U.S. jurisdiction with limited yearly return capacity, and Europe lacks a sovereign equivalent. Downmass refers to mass returned from orbit. Reentry is dominated by U.S.-jurisdiction SpaceX Dragon and is cited as a strategic dependence category. As in-space manufacturing expands and the ISS moves toward decommissioning by 2030, the lack of a European return-from-orbit capacity is becoming both a commercial bottleneck and a sovereignty gap.

The source describes ATMOS Space Cargo’s PHOENIX program as Europe’s most credible attempt to close the gap, noting that PHOENIX 1 has flown, PHOENIX 2 is launching and PHOENIX 3 is designed. ATMOS combines a credible product roadmap with a clear sovereign-customer angle through ATMOS WORKS. On Apr. 22, 2026, ATMOS Space Cargo completed a €25.7 million Series A round and will direct part of the money toward creating a defense division called ATMOS WORKS.

European public buyers traditionally move slowly, purchase small initial volumes and run long sales cycles, yet larger and more durable budget pools plus multi-year framework contracts now make venture backing feasible for firms such as ATMOS. The ATMOS Series A represents one of several recent rounds reflecting this dynamic, and the source expects the pattern to repeat across space domain awareness, secure communications, in-space servicing and dual-use earth observation as the funding environment matures.