EU space monitoring program moves toward ‘strategic autonomy’
Many of the sensors contributed by the 15 EU SST participating states are military assets, and the European Defence Fund also is being tapped to help foster commercial innovation in the space situational awareness domain.
Artist’s rendering showing two of the potential dangers of low-Earth orbit. (Getty graphic)
AUSTIN, Texas — The European Union is expanding its space situational awareness (SSA) program and pushing toward greater use of commercial capabilities, the latest move in a longterm push for “strategic autonomy” that could free the continent from much of its dependency on American space tracking capabilities.
“We decided to foster and really accelerate innovation and foster competitiveness of the European industry and startups in the SSA domain, to consolidate a commercial ecosystem,” said Pascal Faucher, Chairman of the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Partnership (EU SST).
The 15 EU member states whose facilities make up the EU SST network of radars and telescopes “believe that this commercial ecosystem will contribute, will complement, military sensors from the member states to reinforce our strategic autonomy,” he told the 11th Annual Space Traffic Management Conference sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin on Tuesday.
“And then we have a priority related to synergies — how to best exploit synergies between civil and defense — because we need to be realistic and pragmatic. Our budget are limited,” Faucher added.
He explained that while the EU SST currently is funded by the European Commission and the European Union Agency for the Space Program under the EU’s collective “civil program.”
“It means nothing here in the US, but in Europe, it means secure funding,” Faucher said.
However, many of the sensors contributed by the EU SST participants are military assets, and the European Defence Fund also is being tapped to help foster commercial SSA innovation within the 27-nation European Union.
(Graphic: EU SST)
“We need to, of course, be smart and join forces, avoid unnecessary duplications and maximize our investment in those capabilities for civil and defense,” Faucher said.
The EU SST now is being used by 67 different spacecraft operators, he said, most from within Europe but also by some from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Djibouti, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. All totaled, the network is keeping a protective eye on 543 civil, military and commercial satellites, Faucher said.
Faucher further noted that three more countries are expected to soon begin contributing sensors and funding to the project, although he did not name them. The current EU SST member states are: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.
As the program is now entering its eighth year of operations, it is in some ways behind US capabilities — but more advanced in others.
The US Space Force at the moment operates the largest network of space sensors, called the Space Surveillance Network. That network is used to provide operators in the US and around the world with warnings about potential on-orbit crashes between satellites and between satellites and dangerous space debris.
Meanwhile, the Department of Commerce, via the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is working to develop a similar civil network and collision avoidance service in order to relieve the ever-growing burden of providing non-military operators with satellite tracking information and warnings. That effort, called the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCCS), is in its infancy, however.
Further, unlike the EU SST program, TraCCS at the moment is envisioned as a voluntary program, with the Commerce Department eschewing any plans to require companies to participate or impose any regulatory measures to require operators provide data on their satellites’ whereabouts, or take any sort of precautions to enable them to better ensure their satellites don’t endanger others.
In contrast, Faucher said the EU SST program requires that users not only “share their satellites’ attributes,” but also plans for any maneuvers.
“We have a case of legacy in SSA data sharing between nations on a daily basis, or upon request through European database. So this is pretty unique,” he said.
