| Author (Corporate) | European Commission |
|---|---|
| Series Title | COM |
| Series Details | (2013) 107 final (28.2.13) |
| Publication Date | 28/02/2013 |
| Content Type | Policy-making |
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Space-based systems enable a wide spectrum of applications which play a fundamental role in our everyday life (TV, Internet or geopositioning), are critical to key areas of the economy, and help ensuring our security. Space-based applications and derived services as well as space research have become critical for the implementation of EU policies, such as environment, climate change, martime policies, development, agriculture, security related policies including the CFSP/CSDP, as well as the furthering of technical progress and industrial innovation and competitiveness. With increasing dependance on space-based services, the ability to protect space infrastructure has become essential to our society. Any shutdown of even a part of space infrastructures could have significant consequences for the well-functioning of economic activities and our citizens' safety, and would impair the provision of emergency services. However, space infrastructures are increasingly threatened by the risk of collision between spacecraft and more importantly, between spacecraft and space debris. As a matter of fact, space debris has become the most serious threat to the sustainability of certain space activities. In order to mitigate the risk of collision it is necessary to identify and monitor satellites and space debris, catalogue their positions, and track their movements (trajectory) when a potential risk of collision has been identified, so that satellite operators can be alerted to move their satellites. This activity is known as space surveillance and tracking (SST), and is today mostly based on ground-based sensors such as telescopes and radars. Progress on two flagship European programmes, Galileo and Copernicus (the new name for GMES, the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security programme) has also raised awareness of the need to protect EU space infrastructure. Galileo is the first EU space flagship project and will remain one of the major building blocks of the EU intervention in space and Copernicus has a major space-based component (the Sentinel satellites). Born as a R&D project, Copernicus has recently entered its initial operational phase. In line with the above, the current proposal for a Decision concerns the establishment of a European service which will seek to prevent collisions between spacecraft or between spacecraft and debris and monitor uncontrolled re-entry of complete spacecraft or parts thereof. In technical terms this service is referred to as a European SST service. Following the approach envisaged in the Commission Communication "Towards a space strategy for the European Union that benefits its citizens" of 2011, this Decision allows for the definition of a partnership, whereby Member States will contribute with their existing and future assets to the SST capability at European level and the Union will provide a legal framework and a financial contribution to the implementation of the actions defined. The legal framework defines the governance scheme and the data policy in accordance with the relevant Council conclusions. Last, but not least, the proposed European SST services accommodate an essential objective of the space industrial policy of the EU (indentified in the Commission's Communication on Elements for an EU Space Industrial Policy to be released in 2013), namely to achieve European technological non-dependence in critical domains, and to maintain independent access to space. |
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| Source Link | Link to Main Source http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2013:107:FIN |
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| Subject Categories | Business and Industry, Culture, Education and Research |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
