On 7 November, the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) participated for the first time in EUSPA’s User Consultation Platform (UCP), held in Seville (Spain) and online in the frame of the EU Space Week 2023. More than 200 participants attended the UCP’s SST session, focused on shaping the evolution of the EU SST capability and its services.
During the session, presented by Beatriz Gallardo, SST User Engagement Manager at EUSPA, SST users were consulted on their views on an approach to basic/public services – currently offered by EU SST and needed to ensure the safety of space operations – and advanced/commercial services – which may be developed by the EU industry and complementary to the existing EU SST services. The session started with welcome remarks by Rodolphe Muñoz from the European Commission and Dr Pascal Faucher, Chair of the EU SST Partnership, while João Alves from EUSPA presented the EU SST Front Desk.
To stimulate the discussion, the session included a roundtable with spacecraft operators representing all orbital regimes and moderated by Cristina Pérez, from the EU SST Partnership. Speakers from seven organisations – Pier Luigi Righetti (EUMETSAT), Carlos González (HISDESAT), Manuel Sansegundo (HISPASAT), Adam Śmiałek (ICEYE), Charles Law (SES), Emiliano Agosta (SPACEOPAL) and John Janka (VIASAT) – took part in the roundtable, which included questions from the audience both onsite and online.
Participants shared that the EU SST basic/public services are essential, highlighting the service responsiveness and the need for timely information for an efficient management of collision alerts (including planned manoeuvres from other operators). On advanced/commercial services, they mentioned the need for additional support, either for contingencies (such as in case of satellite loss) or for optimising and supporting certain scenarios (such as launch windows, end-of-life or risk thresholds, among others).
Different points of view regarding a potential marketplace that would facilitate the access to the advanced/commercial services to users were also shared, with an overall support to have a single interface with a pool of services.
At the end of the session, EU SST received the T.S. Kelso Award from the Space Data Association in recognition of outstanding contributions to space flight safety.
As next steps, it was agreed that EU SST should continue acting as public catalyst for the EU industry and supporting opportunities to develop new SST services. The conclusions of the user consultation were presented the next day at the UCP Plenary and on 15 November at a meeting of the European Union Industry and Start-ups Forum on Space Traffic Management (EISF), with the objective to continue shaping the evolution of the services.