In 1985, the Luxembourg government did something that raised eyebrows across Europe. It co-founded and backed Société Européenne des Satellites, a private satellite operator, at a time when satellites were still the exclusive domain of governments and state broadcasters. The concept was simple enough: beam television signals directly into European homes via a fixed dish. The execution was anything but.
Three years later, in December 1988, Astra 1A lifted off on an Ariane rocket from Kourou and parked itself at 19.2 degrees East. Within two years it was broadcasting to 14 million homes. Rupert Murdoch's Sky TV was among the first major customers. German commercial broadcasters followed. Europe's television landscape changed permanently, and Luxembourg was at the centre of it.
The risk was real. No private satellite operator had ever done this in Europe. There was no guarantee the market would materialise, no guarantee the technology would hold, and no precedent to point to. The Luxembourg state backed it anyway, taking a founding stake it has never fully relinquished.
