GMV to provide core software for Greek SST System

In support of the Greek Ministry of Digital Governance – General Secretariat of Telecommunications & Posts, the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) has awarded GMV a contract to provide the core software for the Greek Space Surveillance and Tracking and Space Awareness (SST/SSA) Programme, which complements the existing national SST capacity.

The system comprises an operations center, the GR SST NOC, located in Athens at the Operational Unit BEYOND/NOA, and a network of optical telescopes in locations throughout the country, referred to as GR-KRYONERI 1, GR-SKINAKAS 1, GR-THESSALONIKI 1&2, GR-HOLOMON 1&2, and GR-BAKER NUNN to support space tracking and survey operations. It will use GMV’s state-of-the-art COTS software for SST (FocusSST) to support the core processing infrastructure. This includes SST capabilities and functionalities such as sensor tasking, orbit determination, collision avoidance, re-entry prediction (in the operations center), optical data astrometrics and photometric reduction (in each of the network’s telescopes).

To foster the development of an SST capability in Europe, the EU established in 2014 a Framework for Space Surveillance and Tracking Support. This Support Framework aims to develop an independent SSA/SST capability in Europe by EU SST. Since then, the incipient national SST capabilities in the countries within the EU SST consortium have been federated in a coordinated manner: EU SatCen acts as the front desk for the SST services provided by the EU SST consortium.

Being one of these new members of the EU SST Partnership, Greece has been mandated to contribute to the EU SST system with the capabilities of its national SST system.

Both Spanish and Romanian branches of GMV will be involved in the activity, working with teams in Madrid and Bucharest.

With this new project, GMV strengthens its position as the European industrial leader in Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST). All in all, over 100 GMV engineers currently work at GMV on SSA/SST activities in seven European countries, making it the largest SSA/SST industry and team in Europe. GMV works intensively in this field for the EU SST (in Spain, France, Germany, Romania, Poland, and Portugal), for ESA (in addition to the previous list, from the UK), as well as in the commercial sector (providing collision avoidance services to more than ten operators and more than 80 satellites through its Focusoc operations center) and in the military domain.