Luxembourg to Invest €6.7m in NATO Space Project

At the Brussels Summit on Monday, Luxembourg's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, François Bausch, signed a joint declaration with the Deputy Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Mircea Geoană, aimed at financing a Strategic Situational Awareness System (3SAS) in the NATO Situation Centre (SITCEN).

Today, space is a field undergoing profound change with many new players, both public and private, with new ambitions. However, there is also an increasing amount of debris that can destroy current satellites. Monitoring this space debris is thus deemed necessary in order to guarantee the general security of military and civilian space assets. In December 2019, NATO declared space as a new operational domain.

In this context, the NATO SITCEN, created in 1968, aims to alert the North Atlantic Council and the Military Committee and provide them with situational knowledge of space, in order to help them to accomplish their respective missions in peacetime, in times of tension or crisis and during high-level exercises.

The project proposed by SITCEN and financed by Luxembourg aims to develop a strategic knowledge system of the space situation in order to improve the Alliance's knowledge in this field and thus facilitate coordination, cooperation and data sharing. Over three years, Luxembourg will invest up to €6.7 million in the development of the project.

Defence Minister François Bausch specified that this investment aims to position Luxembourg as a major player in the space sector within NATO and to prove the Defence's willingness to invest in this very important area in the future. The development of a strategic knowledge system of the space situation to monitor activity in all orbits is expected to help to protect Luxembourg's space resources, as well as those of its strategic partners, thus aiming to guarantee respect for the peaceful use of space.

The project will be carried out in close cooperation with the NATO SITCEN.