In 2012, Astrium had a turnover of €5.8 billion and 18,000 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands.

It was specialized in the manufacturing of spacecraft used for science, Earth observation and telecommunications, as well as the equipment and subsystems used therein and related ground systems.

EADS Astrium Satellites employed around 8,348 people on nine sites in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Also, Paradigm Secure Communications, initially created by Astrium in the frame of the Skynet 5 contract for the UK Ministry of Defence became the major constituent of EADS SPACE Services.

It joined the team led by Lockheed Martin for a bid on NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), being in charge of the craft's Mission Module.

In 2005, EADS Astrium Space Transportation started a campaign in favour of a project called LIFE, for astronomy from the Moon surface.

These manufacturing facilities utilise specialist CTH03 and CTH04 high technology equipment containers which allow the safe transport of Airbus integrated spacecraft in a horizontal position when sending them worldwide to launch sites.

In March 2009 EADS Astrium confirmed that the programme had been placed on hold indefinitely; the decision had been made in January of that year.

Under the contract Astrium will provide and install the various test equipment (mechanical, radiometric, thermal and acoustic facilities) at the new AIT Centre.

Astrium will also assist KGS in the construction of the AIT Centre to ensure coordination with the test equipment.