Ten years ago today, on 1 July 2016, five Member States embarked on a new endeavour: they networked their national sensors and processing capabilities and started providing services to help spacecraft operators protect their satellites from collisions in space.
Over the past ten years, EU SST has been growing in terms of capabilities, assets, members and users. And the figures speak for themselves:
- there are now 19 Member States in the EU SST Partnership – up from five in the EU SST Consortium ten years ago
- the Partnership, together with the SST Front Desk at EUSPA, now protects more than 690 satellites from collisions in space
- more than 400 organisations, both within and outside the EU, rely on EU SST services today
- Collision Avoidance and Re-entry Analysis services are also open to users outside of the EU, making EU SST an internationally trusted brand
- some 70 operational sensors, both national and commercial, contribute from all over the world to keep assets in space safe
So today, on 1 July 2026, EU SST celebrates 10 years of operations – that’s 10 years of space safety and sustainability made in the EU! This is a great achievement, and we’re very proud of that. Congratulations and a big thank you to the EU SST Partnership and the SST Front Desk at EUSPA for this major milestone and the excellent cooperation over the years!
EU SST is a success story of EU cooperation, of what can be achieved together: EU SST, that’s
- three operations centres managed by France, Spain and Italy,
- measurements, database and cataloguing capabilities managed by Germany,
- the SST Front Desk managed by EUSPA, and
- a worldwide sensor network and processing capabilities managed by the EU Member States of the EU SST Partnership.
Together, they provide three operational services – Collision Avoidance, Re-entry Analysis and Fragmentation Analysis– 24/7 round the clock free of charge. This helps to foster EU non-dependence and autonomy in space surveillance and tracking capabilities, boost space safety and sustainability made in Europe, and promote the EU as a reliable and trustful partner in keeping space assets safe.
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
- Publication date
- 1 July 2026
- Author
- Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space