A space antenna farm amid the Ardennes forest

ESA’s European Space Security and Education Centre in Redu, Belgium, with a focus on cybersecurity and education, is also tasked with oversight of the Proba series of minisatellites. The largest antenna seen here, with its full-motion 20-m diameter dish, played a key role in the in-orbit testing of Europe’s first Galileo satellites, able to acquire the satellite signal-in-space at high resolution for detailed examination.

Radio (as well as, increasingly, optical) communications are what keep space missions connected back to their homeworld, uplinking commands and downlinking platform status information as well as mission data for end-users. Satellite orbits are set by their function, but can extend all around the world as well as far deeper into space, meaning that worldwide networks of ground stations become essential.

ESA’s Estrack system of ground stations has a core network of seven stations in seven countries, complemented by commercial providers as required. Simply put, the bigger the radio dish the more distant the spacecraft they are able to serve – so Estrack also possesses a trio of 35 m-diameter Deep Space Antennas for interplanetary missions such as the Juice mission to Jupiter or the Rosetta comet chaser. For Galileo, Europe’s single largest satellite constellation, a dedicated global network of ground stations is essential to ensure the continued reliability of the time and positioning information embedded within the signals from orbit, established by ESA and overseen by EUSPA – maintaining Galileo’s status as the world’s most precise satellite navigation system.

With connectivity becoming an essential public good, the EU has established the Govsatcom programme, ensuring availability of reliable, secure and cost-effective governmental satellite communications services, serving EU institutions and national public authorities managing security critical missions and infrastructures. And Iris² will soon broaden the use of safe and secure satellite data to citizens and businesses.