Ships are currently equipped with a short range traffic information system called Automatic Identification System (AIS) allowing communications with coastal stations or on a ship-to-ship basis.  It is meant to help ship crews avoiding collisions and maritime authorities identifying and detecting ship movements. However, the system’s range being limited, no global overview is available today.

Current ESA’s initiative aims at providing Europe with appropriate capabilities to improve the maritime traffic monitoring, border control, safety and security as well as the fishery control campaigns.

SPACEBEL and CLS (prime contractor) act as core partners for the development of the Data Processing Centre (DPC) Monitoring, Data Management and Archive functions. The mission of the DPC is to control and enhance the quality of SAT-AIS data.

SPACEBEL is proud to be part of the SAT-AIS project as it opens up a new sector and gives us the opportunity to offer our expertise in mission and control centres to CLS, our new customer.

ESA’s new independent satellite constellation called European Data Rely Satellite System (EDRS) is meant to considerably reduce time delays in the transmission of huge quantities of data, thus ensuring a faster and fully reliable service to all users of Earth Observation data (i.e. scientists, government and security services, rescue teams, armed forces). The EDRS system will comprise two satellites in geostationary orbit, which will receive data from low Earth orbit platforms and relay them to the ground segment consisting of a control centre, a mission operations centre and several data ground stations. Two particular features of the EDRS system should be pointed out: laser communication and the size of its mission operations centre. The first EDRS satellite is expected to be launched in 2014 followed by the second one in 2015.

On January 31st, SPACEBEL signed a contract with Redu Space Services (RSS) for the design, development and delivery of the EDRS Mission Operations Centre (MOC). SPACEBEL will provide, amongst other functions, the reception of GMES and other customer service requests as well as the transformation of these requests into planning and configuration schedules. SPACEBEL will also be in charge of the software architectural design, the validation and integration of the MOC including ground segment system monitoring and control in order to ensure its optimal availability, network management & security as well as user support.

The main Mission and Operations Centre will be located in Ottobrünn, Germany, and operated by ASTRIUM GmbH, prime contractor, whereas RSS will run the back-up MOC situated in Redu, Belgium. RSS, with the support of SPACEBEL, will ensure the maintenance of the full MOC covering the whole EDRS mission duration, currently planned to last  18 years .

Possessing already a recognized expertise in the design, development, test, integration and validation of mission operations centres and systems, SPACEBEL notches up another important reference with the EDRS project.

Spacebel has been selected as the prime contractor for the design, implementation and deployment of the Space Weather (SWE) monitoring and forecast portal services. The Space Weather segment’s aim is to detect and forecast space weather events and the effects on European space assets and ground based infrastructure.        
As part of the Pilot Data Centre’s element of the SSA programme, this interactive portal links applications available in the Space Weather Data Centre with data sources available from various providers and incorporates a level of analysis capability. The portal is to provide a centralised access point linking all aspects of the Space Weather service network, including expert services centres and federated services. The system is based upoon a service oriented architecture and is expected to be made operational and fulfil the needs of the SSA programme.

With this SSA-DC II project, Spacebel is once more pleased to be part of the Space Weather key element of the SSA programme.

VTS is a satellite simulation toolkit integrating space data such as position, orientation, battery load, as well as sensors and ground station configuration data. Data can be viewed in 2D or 3D, plots and every compatible application built in accordance with the CCSDS standard.

The toolkit is used by a multidisciplinary team of experts including flight dynamics engineers who are involved in the design of future space missions.

The new contract acknowledges SPACEBEL’s know-how in the field of simulators and visualisation tools.

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Merry Christmas to all of you!

The Pléiades programme based upon two optical satellites weighing a ton each is meant to satisfy the needs of both civil and military users. Planned for an operational lifetime of 5 years, both satellites will scrutinize our planet in order to gather images useful for agriculture, territory planning, natural disaster management, etc.  … They will also provide data on population movements as well as on the topography of conflict areas. By their size, their image resolution, their high agility in orbit and their capacity of retransmission to the ground, the Pléiades satellites represent a significant technological progress to which SPACEBEL is proud to bring its contribution.

SPACEBEL started to work on the Pléiades project from 2004 onwards with a first contract related to the design of the satellite’s on-board software intended for the control of both the platform and the scientific payloads. A year later, SPACEBEL was selected by CNES to take part in the development of the mission centre, which will centralize all requests for image acquisition, receive and process the on-board instrument data and provide these to the scientific world. SPACEBEL has been specifically in charge of the realization of two subsystems of the programming chain related to the payload management and the reception station management.
SPACEBEL also contributes to the mission engineering and intervenes in the simulation activities allowing amongst others to verify the good functioning of the satellite before its departure into Space.

On this occasion, visitors will have the opportunity to experience a demonstration of the Space Weather Portal to which SPACEBEL has largely contributed through the SN-1 project as leader of the redeployment and validation of the precursor services.

The Space Weather segment’s aim is to detect and forecast space weather events and the effects on European space assets and ground based infrastructure. The SN-1 project constitutes the definition and service consolidation phase and is designed to develop the infrastructure for a set of precursor services and to deploy those services.

SPACEBEL’s role in these activities ranges from the definition and review of IT requirements over the development of the Space Weather Services Portal to the integration of the deployed services.

Watch the video for further information.

With the development of the space activities of CNES, the scope of balloons has expanded from atmosphere studies and astronomy to technological purposes. Nowadays, they also allow testing the instruments to fly on board of satellites. In order to manage the growing number of required balloon launchings and comply with more and more stringent security and safeguard policies, CNES has to renovate, in particular, the entire acquisition and information management system on the ground. NOSYCA will manage several missions simultaneously including up to 20 balloons in the air, with or without permanent board/ground connection.

SPACEBEL is in charge of the design, development and maintenance activities related to the simulators for studies and system validation of CNES missions.           
Thanks to this new agreement resulting from our qualification as ACIBS frame contract partner of CNES, SPACEBEL extends their know-how in terms of satellite simulation to the field of stratospheric balloons.

Since its creation, SPACEBEL has put special emphasis on development and innovation activities in order to ensure its growth in a market of ​​high technology and high competition. We now distinguish two main areas of innovation: microsatellites and geospatial information management.

The first axis, concerning the marketing of a PROBA-like microsatellite in collaboration with QinetiQ Space NV, AMOS SA, the University of Liege and Deltatec SA, has received the support from the European Space Agency, the Belgian Federal Authorities and the Walloon Region (Marshall Plan). Today, it has resulted in the selection of SPACEBEL to supply the VNREDSat-1b Earth observation satellite to Vietnam.

The second axis, oriented towards the commercial exploitation of geospatial data (satellite imagery, mapping, field data, sensor networks measurements) is the result of coordinated research programmes, supported by the European Space Agency, European Commission (6^th and 7^th Framework Programme) and the Walloon Region (Marshall Plan).