The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that European aerospace groups Airbus and Thales are exploring a tie-up of some space activities as competition disrupts the sector. A Reuters dispatch to The Globe says preliminary talks were focusing on their overlapping satellite activities. Airbus and Thales Alenia Space, in which Italy's Leonardo holds a 33-per-cent share, are Europe's largest makers of satellites for telecom, navigation and surveillance. Demand for their geostationary satellites is increasingly under pressure as traditional manufacturers face competition from massive constellations of expendable satellites in low-Earth orbit, like the Starlink network of Elon Musk's SpaceX. La Tribune newspaper reported that pan-European group Airbus, which is headquartered in France, and French defence and technology firm Thales had begun "low-key discussions that are exploratory in nature" on space, backed by the French government. It added that the companies had explored similar tie-ups as recently as 2019, but faced potential antitrust objections by the European Commission. Airbus recently took a 900-million-euro charge for its struggling space services business, on top of a 500-million-euro charge last year.