Jan. 29, 2016

The Italian Space Agency hosted the national Info Day on the European Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) programme, taking stock of the situation

The EU 2014 support framework triggered the Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) programme for tracking objects and space debris in the Earth's orbit, thus providing a new 'space' service to European users. The growing threat of space debris and collisions between objects in the Earth's orbit has led the European Union to move into action.
Monitoring these dangerous space objects has become extremely important, in order to guarantee not only the safety of EU citizens, but also of the European space assets that orbit around the Earth. The intent of the INFO Day, which took place last Friday at the headquarters of the Italian Space Agency, was to present and promote Italy’s contributions to this programme. The SST programme is supervised by the European Commission, but it is managed directly by the European Consortium, established in 2015 by an agreement between the space agencies of Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and Spain.

Through collaboration between the five members of the Consortium and the EU Sat Cen (European Union Satellite Centre), the European Union will acquire new expertise in the space sector, following the successes of the Galileo programme, for satellite navigation, and Copernicus, for Earth observation.
The Body responsible for the Coordination and Guidance ofthe activities of the SST (OCIS) has the task of coordinating Italy's commitments to the European programme and to provide guidance to the Italian Space Agency (ASI), as the country’s representative within the SST Consortium. Italy will therefore make infrastructures available for the tracking of space objects, including radar sensors and optical telescopes present in our country. Among these, there is The Northern Cross, located in Medicina (Bologna), and also a new SRT Sardinia Radio Telescope in Sardinia.

Hence, a need for dialogue between Italian institutes has emerged, particularly with the Regional Authorities, in order to optimize the resources scattered over the Italian territory and to increase Italy's presence within ambitious European programmes that can make Italian excellence a front-row participant in the space sector.
The funds, which come from the European Commission and are currently guaranteed until 2020, come under the Horizon2020programme. This funding is shared equally between the participating space agencies. Looking to the future of the SST framework, discussions have also taken place on the possibility of including other countries in the Consortium, once the project is well-established, so that a larger number of European resources and infrastructures can be included.