The satellite departed Wednesday afternoon, a little before five o’clock in the afternoon Dutch time, towards Earth orbit. That happened after launch with a launcher from a Boeing 747 from space company Virgin Orbit. Once it arrives at roughly 500 kilometers above the surface, Brik II will soon circle the Earth continuously, with one round lasting one and a half.
The communications satellite, developed by the Air Force in collaboration with TU Delft and the University of Oslo, among others, is a so-called microsatellite. With a size of 30 by 20 by 10 centimeters, it is a small boost compared to the thousands of kilograms heavy military satellites of geopolitical powers such as the United States and China.
Where such countries already have complete military communication networks orbiting the earth, the launch of Bik II only marks the first modest Dutch step towards the cosmos. The satellite should primarily serve as a technological test to increase the experience with this type of satellite in the Dutch armed forces.
From its orbit around the earth, the device will soon be able to pick up radio traffic in certain areas, map disturbances of radio signals and send messages to radio stations on the ground.
Fifth War Domain
At the end of 2019, NATO recognized space as the fifth domain of war, alongside land, sea, air and cyber. Partly for this reason, outgoing Minister of Defense Ank Bijleveld wrote in a letter to parliament about the launch this week that the Netherlands has the goal of becoming a fully-fledged space force by 2030. By that time, in addition to satellites in space, our country must also have infrastructure on the ground to process the information from those satellites.
‘Defensie has been working with space for years and actively follows current space-related developments. Not only in a NATO and EU context, but also the activities of countries such as China and Russia,” the minister wrote to the House, among other things. Moreover, Bijleveld states that the Netherlands is aware that the military use of space around the world has increased and is becoming increasingly important.
The fact that the Netherlands wants to develop into a space power does not mean that we are now suddenly going to build science fiction-like satellite weapons that can reduce our geopolitical enemies from heaven to heaps of dust. Such weapons have been banned under the United Nations’ space treaty since the 1960s.
Instead, most military satellites are built for communications or espionage purposes. In the Netherlands, too, the emphasis in a future satellite fleet will be on ‘communication, positioning, navigation and observation’, writes Bijleveld.
Brik II is named after ‘De Brik’, from 1913. That aircraft of the Aviation Department of the Royal Netherlands Army, the predecessor of the air force, was the first military aircraft in the Netherlands.