Rheinmetall and ICEYE launch joint satellite production in Germany

German defense concern Rheinmetall, together with satellite manufacturer ICEYE, announced the creation of a new enterprise for the production of spacecraft. This is reported by Militarnyi with reference to the Rheinmetall website. As part of this agreement, Rheinmetall will become the majority shareholder, owning 60% of the shares, while ICEYE will have 40%.

Satellite production will be located within Rheinmetall’s space cluster in Germany, specifically at the Neuss plant. The company will initially focus on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and will later expand production to other space solutions. Serial production is scheduled to begin in Q2 2026.

Rheinmetall and ICEYE already collaborated in the field of satellite technology in 2024, providing Ukraine with expanded access to satellite data. As part of this agreement, Ukrainian intelligence gained the opportunity to use satellite images of Russian military facilities, which significantly strengthened its analytical capabilities.

As is known, in 2022, the Serhiy Prytula Foundation purchased a satellite and access to the ICEYE constellation satellite image database for the Ukrainian army for UAH 600 million, collected by Ukrainians.