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| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Spacecraft |
| Predecessor | Marconi Space Systems, Matra Espace |
| Founded | 1990 |
| Defunct | 2000 |
| Fate | Merged with DASA in 2000 |
| Successor | Astrium |
| Headquarters | Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, France |
Area served | United Kingdom, France |
| Products | Satellites |
Number of employees | 1100 (UK) |
| Parent | GEC-Marconi, Lagardère Group |
Matra Marconi Space (MMS) was a Franco-British aerospace company.
Matra Marconi Space was established in 1990 as a joint venture between the space and telecommunication divisions of the Lagardère Group (Matra Espace) and the GEC group (Marconi Space Systems). The merged company was announced in December 1989 and was owned 51% by Matra and 49% by GEC-Marconi. It would have annual sales of £300 million, with £8.7 million in assets from Marconi Space Systems and £10.7 million in assets from Matra Espace.
Claude Goumy, the Managing Director of Matra Espace was the first Managing Director. The first deputy Managing Director was Richard Wignall, the former Managing Director of Marconi Space Systems. The space industry was important to France - almost half the budget of the European Space Agency (ESA) came from the French government.
In 1991, British Aerospace was discussing with MMS how to merge their space interests, as well as Robert Bosch GmbH and Deutsche Aerospace.
On 19 July 1994, it acquired British Aerospace Space Systems (a subsidiary of BAe Dynamics with 900 workers) for £56 million. On 11 August 1994, it bought Ferranti Satcomms (from administration), which was based in Poynton in Cheshire. Ferranti Satcomms brought satellite ground station, component and subsystem technologies to the group.
In July 1995, GEC bought 45% of shares in the National Remote Sensing Centre for the company. Also in July 1995, the company was looking to link up with Aérospatiale of Toulouse and DASA of Germany to form a Europe-wide space company. The company would (five years later) link up with DASA.
By 1996, the company was turning over more than £1 billion. In the late 1990s, it developed a partnership with the University of Sheffield's Sheffield Centre for Earth Observation Science (SCEOS), which researched interferometry.
In November 1997, it announced that it would close the Filton site (former BAe Dynamics) in August 1999, with the planned transfer of 300 of 400 personnel and staff from Bristol to Stevenage. The Filton site specialised in scientific satellites and their computer software; projects included Ulysses, Hubble Space Telescope Solar Arrays, Giotto, Envisat / Polar Platform, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO) and the Cluster spacecraft destroyed in the first flight of Ariane 5. Over 380 staff left the Company and as a result, MMS lost the ESA prime contract for the Rosetta spacecraft. British Aerospace regained an interest in the company when it merged with GEC's Marconi Electronic Systems to form BAE Systems in November 1999.
In late 1998, it was discussing a possible merger with DaimlerChrysler Aerospace AG (DASA). In 2000, it was merged with the space division of DASA to form Astrium.
Aérospatiale, sometimes styled Aerospatiale, was a French state-owned aerospace manufacturer that built both civilian and military aircraft, rockets and satellites. It was originally known as Société nationale industrielle aérospatiale (SNIAS). Its head office was in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The name was changed to Aérospatiale during 1970.
British Aerospace plc (BAe) was a British aircraft, munitions and defence-systems manufacturer. Its head office was at Warwick House in the Farnborough Aerospace Centre in Farnborough, Hampshire. Formed in 1977, in 1999 it purchased Marconi Electronic Systems, the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc, to form BAE Systems.
Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), or GEC-Marconi as it was until 1998, was the defence arm of General Electric Company (GEC). It was demerged from GEC and bought by British Aerospace (BAe) on 30 November 1999 to form BAE Systems. GEC then renamed itself Marconi plc.
Matra was a French industrial conglomerate. During its years of operation, it was engaged in a wide range of business activities, primarily focused around automobiles, bicycles, aeronautics and weaponry.
The General Electric Company, or GEC, was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was founded in 1886, was Britain's largest private employer with over 250,000 employees in the 1980s, and at its peak in the 1990s, made profits of over £1 billion a year.
British Aerospace Space Systems Ltd was a subsidiary of British Aerospace.
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British Aerospace Dynamics Limited was a division of British Aerospace.
Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS) was a major European integrated defence electronics company and an equal shares joint venture between BAE Systems and Finmeccanica until its dissolution on 3 May 2005.
The Euroradar Captor is a next-generation mechanical multi-mode pulse Doppler radar designed for the Eurofighter Typhoon. Development of Captor led to the Airborne Multirole Solid State Active Array Radar (AMSAR) project which eventually produced the CAESAR, now known as Captor-E.
Ferranti or Ferranti International plc was a UK electrical engineering and equipment firm that operated for over a century from 1885 until it went bankrupt in 1993. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897, which underwent several changes in name after mergers and acquisitions. The company was a pioneer of wireless long distance communication and mass media broadcasting, eventually becoming one of the UK's most successful manufacturing companies. In 1999, its defence equipment manufacturing division, Marconi Electronic Systems, merged with British Aerospace (BAe) to form BAE Systems. In 2006, financial difficulties led to the collapse of the remaining company, with the bulk of the business acquired by the Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson.
Siemens Plessey was the name given to the Plessey assets acquired by Siemens in 1989. Today most of these units are part of BAE Systems while some units are now part of EADS.
Nilesat 102 is an Egyptian owned geosynchronous communications satellite that was launched by an Ariane 44LP rocket from Kourou, French Guiana on August 17, 2000 at 23:16 UTC by the European Space Agency. It was manufactured by the European company Matra Marconi Space (Astrium), and started official broadcasting on 12 September 2000 with an expected lifetime of 15 years. The spacecraft weighed 1,827 kg at launch.
Nilesat 101 is an Egyptian owned geosynchronous communications satellite that was decommissioned in February 2013.
Astrium was an aerospace manufacturer subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) that provided civil and military space systems and services from 2006 to 2013. In 2012, Astrium had a turnover of €5.8 billion and 18,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Astrium was a member of Institute of Space, its Applications and Technologies.
Nilesat is an Egyptian company and the name of a series of Egyptian communications satellites. It was established in 1996 with the purpose of operating Egyptian satellites and their associated mission control center and ground stations. The company is owned by the Egyptian Radio & Television Union with a 40 per cent share, the Arab Organization for Industrialization with a 10 per cent share, the Egyptian Company for Investment Projects with a 9 per cent share and the rest is owned by the general public, Egyptian financial institutions and other investors. The company has two ground stations, a primary one in 6th of October City and a secondary ground station in Alexandria. The two ground stations were built by EADS Astrium. Nilesat operates multiple geosynchronous communications satellites all of which are stationed at 7 degrees West. Nilesat includes as of 18 January 2008 415 video channels, 300 of which are free-to-air.
Eurostar is a satellite bus made by Airbus Defence and Space (formerly Astrium, and before 1994, British Aerospace, and Matra Marconi Space which has been used for a series of spacecraft providing telecommunications services in geosynchronous orbit. More than 70 Eurostar satellites have been ordered to date, of which more than 55 have been successfully launched since October 1990 and have proven highly reliable in operational service. In December 2013, the Eurostar satellites accumulated 500 years of successful operations in orbit. The Eurostar spacecraft series is designed for a variety of telecommunications needs including fixed services and broadcast, mobile services, broadband and secured communications.
Olympus-1 was a communications satellite built by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space, along with Fokker and SPAR Aerospace, for the European Space Agency. At the time of its launch on 12 July 1989, it was the largest civilian telecommunications satellite ever built, and sometimes known as "LargeSat" or "L-Sat". The satellite had a series of unfortunate accidents in orbit and went out of service on 11/12 August 1993. The first accident was the loss of ability to articulate the satellite's solar arrays. This was later followed by the loss of an on-board gyro during the height of the Perseid meteor shower. The satellite spun out of control and efforts to stabilise it resulted in the expenditure of the majority of its fuel. Subsequently, it was moved to a GEO disposal orbit and was put out of commission. The Olympus bus was reincarnated as Alphabus, made by the same manufacturers, this time for Inmarsat.
Airbus Defence and Space is a division of Airbus responsible for defence and aerospace products and services. The division was formed in January 2014 during the corporate restructuring of European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS), and comprises the former Airbus Military, Astrium, and Cassidian divisions. It is the world's second largest space company after Boeing and one of the top ten defence companies in the world.
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