ESA Awards GMV Six New R&D Activities Under the S3T Contract

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded to GMV six research and development activities under the S3T contract framework, fully funded by the Spanish Space Agency (Agencia Espacial Española, AEE), to boost innovation in Spain’s national Space Surveillance and Tracking (S3T) system. 

The adjudicated activities are:

• FAINTRACK – Focuses on the use of 2-meter aperture class telescopes to track faint debris in MEO and GEO, enhancing observation capabilities for very faint objects.

• S3TAVIA – Develops methods for operational risk assessment on aviation posed by re-entering space objects.

• LUCAS – A feasibility study for providing collision avoidance services in the cislunar environment, extending the scope of S3T towards lunar missions.

• THEDECA – Aims to calibrate thermospheric density models to improve orbital prediction accuracy.

• S3TZERODEB – Proposes an evolution of S3T services in line with the Zero Debris Charter by developing sustainability-oriented services such as mission compliance assessments to the Zero Debris guidelines.

• PRION – Improves ionospheric corrections to radar measurements using advanced tomographic models, enhancing the precision of S3T data.

The first four activities (FAINTRACK, S3TAVIA, LUCAS, and THEDECA) are currently underway, while S3TZERODEB and PRION are scheduled to start on the last quarter of the year.

These activities fall under different innovation layers outlined in the S3T R&D roadmap—data acquisition, cataloguing, services, and knowledge improvement—and aim to improve performance, introduce new capabilities, and reinforce Spanish leadership in space sustainability.

These contracts are fully funded by the Spanish Space Agency (AEE) in the frame of the Spanish Space Surveillance and Tracking (S3T) Programme, managed technically by ESA on behalf of AEE.