After a European open call for tender the technology multinational GMV, has been awarded by a new contract by the German Space Agency at DLR for maintenance and upgrade of the Mission System of the German Space Situational Awareness Centre (GSSAC), located in Uedem, Germany.
In order to foster the development of an SST capability in Europe, the EU established in 2014 (through decision No. 541/2014/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014) a Framework for Space Surveillance and Tracking Support. The aim of this Support Framework is to develop an independent SSA/SST capability in Europe by EU SST. Since then, the incipient national SST capabilities in the countries within the so-called EU SST consortium (Germany, France, UK, Italy, and Spain since 2016 and also Poland, Romania, and Portugal since 2019, the UK left the consortium in 2021 post‑Brexit) have been federated in a coordinated manner; EU SatCen acts as front desk for the SST services provided by the EU SST consortium.
This new project is part of data processing activities within EU SST under German Space Agency’s responsibility. Its main objective is to maintain and upgrade the GSSAC Mission System in order to meet future requirements of an advanced framework regarding performance and scalability, based on GMV’s experience and capabilities in the field.
Both German and Spanish branches of GMV will be involved in the activity, working with teams located in Darmstadt and Madrid. GMV leads EU SST contracts in 5 countries (Spain, France, Germany, Poland, and Romania) and counts on additional capabilities and contracts in the UK in the SST domain. All in all, nearly 70 GMV engineers work at GMV in SSA/SST activities; this makes it the biggest SSA/SST industry and team in Europe.
