15 EU Member States sign EU SST Partnership agreement

On 11 November 2022, the Constituting National Entities of 15 EU Member States signed the EU SST Partnership agreement. This is another major milestone for the EU SST subcomponent, an important initiative to keep space assets safe from in-orbit collisions in light of increasing space activities. It follows the adoption of the EU Space Regulation about 1.5 years ago, the Commission Implementing Decision on the EU SST Partnership and the submission of the joint proposal of 15 EU Member States for an EU SST Partnership over the summer, and the approval of this proposal by the Commission just last month.  

Such efficient timing was made possible thanks to close cooperation and coordination between EU Member States, DG DEFIS and others, thereby allowing to achieve several milestones in such short sequences. 

The 15 EU Member States of the newly created EU SST Partnership are Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden. They have networked their national assets (radars, telescopes and lasers) into the EU SST system.  

In cooperation with the SST Front Desk, they provide three services: 

• Collision Avoidance (CA): Assesses risk of collision between satellites or between satellites and space debris and generates collision avoidance alerts.
• Re-entry Analysis (RE): Assesses risk of uncontrolled re-entry of space objects into the Earth’s atmosphere and generates related information.
• Fragmentation Analysis (FG): Detects and characterises in-orbit fragmentations, break-ups or collisions, and analyses all available information regarding the object(s) involved in the event. 

The EU SST Partnership is the successor of the previous EU SST Consortium created in 2014. It also more than doubled in size from previous 7 Consortium members to 15 Partnership members. This demonstrates the growing interest of EU Member States in space safety and, more importantly, their increasing space surveillance and tracking capabilities – a precondition for joining the EU SST Partnership. 

Upcoming milestones for the EU SST subcomponent include:  

• transfer of the SST Front Desk to the EU Agency for the Space Programme
• handover of provision of SST services to the EU SST Partnership
• award of the next EU SST Grant co-financing the activities of the EU SST Partnership 

Background 

EU SST is a subcomponent of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) component of the EU Space Programme. It safeguards space assets, especially EU Space Programme satellites such as Galileo, EGNOS, Copernicus, GOVSATCOM and in the future IRIS², along with the space assets of EU Member States and other space operators.  

EU SST uses a network of ground-based sensors capable of surveying and tracking space objects and processing capabilities aimed at improving, operating, and providing data, information and services on space objects orbiting the Earth. This helps to mitigate the risk of a collision between space assets and other spacecraft and debris, in-orbit fragmentations and uncontrolled re-entries of space objects into the Earth’s atmosphere. 

More information 

• Regulation (EU) 2021/696
• Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/1245
• Commission Decision C(2022)6942
• EU Space Surveillance and Tracking - European Commission
• EU SST – EU Space Surveillance and Tracking
• Commission adopts Decision outlining steps for Member States’ participation in EU SST sub-component of the EU Space Programme  - European Commission  
• Commission receives and greenlights joint proposal of 15 EU Member States for setting up EU SST Partnership - European Commission 
• New EU SST Partnership of 15 Member States signed – EU SST