SST Front Desk successfully transferred to EUSPA, and EU SST Partnership takes over provision of EU SST services

On 1 July 2023, the SST Front Desk was transferred seamlessly and successfully from EU SatCen to EUSPA. On the same day, the EU SST Partnership took over the provision of EU SST services from the EU SST Consortium.

These are two more major milestones for the EU SST subcomponent, an important initiative to keep space assets safe from in-orbit collisions in light of increasing space activities. They follow the adoption of the EU Space Regulation about two 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 one year ago, the approval of this proposal by the Commission just nine months ago, and the signature of the EU SST Partnership agreement seven months ago.

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.

As part of the SST Front Desk transfer, the team of the SST Front Desk, previously a part of SatCen, moved to EUSPA; this included a change of location to EUSPA’s Galileo Security Monitoring Centre (GSMC) in Madrid, Spain and a setup from scratch of the EU SST Front Desk IT infrastructure at the new site. SatCen and EUSPA worked closely together to ensure that the three EU SST services were provided to all users without any interruption – a critical element as an interruption of services could increase the risk of a collision between satellite and another space object or space debris.

On the same day, and with the SST Front Desk now at EUSPA, the EU SST Partnership of 15 Member States took over the provision of the three SST services from the EU SST Consortium of 7 Member States. This means that the EU SST Partnership is now officially up and running.

Together, the EU SST Partnership and the SST Front Desk provide:

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 next milestone for the EU SST subcomponent is the award of the next EU SST Grant co-financing the activities of the EU SST Partnership for the period 2023-2026.

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

Details

Publication date: 1 July 2023
Author: Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space