In space, we can’t defend what we can’t see

At the time of writing, there are 15,600 active satellites in orbit. By 2035, more than 43,000 satellites will have been launched. Orbit, in other words, is getting crowded. But it is also – increasingly – contested, with rival countries routinely tracking each other’s assets and developing the ability to destroy, disable, or intercept satellites. Given how vital Europe’s space infrastructure is to our defence (to say nothing of our economy), it almost goes without saying that we need to be able to see what is going on, writes Simera Sense France Managing Director Kammy Brun.

Space Situational Awareness (SSA) refers to the ability to see what is happening in orbit. It’s an area of tremendous growth: it has been estimated that over the next ten years, cumulative SSA spending will reach $61 billion (€52.6 billion) in which the top three government spending will be the US, China and Russia. This reflects a rising consciousness among governments and defence agencies not only that satellites are at risk, but that it is often very hard to identify hostile activity. Indeed, because the Earth's orbit is a shared global commons with largely voluntary traffic coordination, determining exactly why a satellite failed or who is responsible for a collision is a major hurdle. Countries like Russia have been exploiting this ambiguity, engaging in a form of hybrid warfare that they can plausibly deny engaging in, and which never quite meets the threshold of open conflict. Both defensive and offensive counterspace capabilities require space situational data and services for target identification and threat assessment.

It’s hard to overstate the havoc that would be caused if a strategically important satellite or cluster of satellites were seriously damaged. Europe’s space infrastructure supports an estimated 25 per cent of the European downstream market, providing critical revenue through satellite communications, Earth observation, and navigation systems like Galileo. These systems form the backbone of daily life. Banking, logistics, aviation, weather forecasting, emergency response, precision timing – all of these depend on space. Grave satellite failures would be felt acutely on the ground.

Europe and its constituent national governments and defence agencies cannot afford to leave their satellite infrastructure undefended, and defending it starts with being able to see what is going on. There are positive signs – among them, the French government’s promise to invest billions of euros more in space-related defence projects between 2026 and 2030 and Germany’s space strategy, which includes a €35 billion investment in military space. But SSA must be considered a strategic priority across the continent if we, as Europeans, truly wish to be resilient in the face of aggression and gain the kind of strategic autonomy – a longstanding goal of the European Union – that will allow us to navigate the shifting sands of modern geopolitics.

We live in a dangerous age, and analysts increasingly see space as an active theatre of competition. Russia has already shown its willingness to target, through jamming and interference, the space-enabled systems on which Europe depends. China, meanwhile, is rapidly building up the architecture needed for it to become a military space superpower notably with their Low Earth Orbit (LEO) mega constellation Guowang. China has already registered a request with the International Telecommunications Union to put 12,992 satellites into orbit, or roughly 1,000 more than what has so far been authorized for Starlink. What Europe has are world-class research facilities, first-rate high-resolution optical technology capable of letting a satellite see a tiny object from kilometres away, and an abundance of talented engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs. The continent is also home to some of the richest countries in the world. We have all the raw material to develop sovereign SSA to rival any, anywhere on the planet.

The task now is to turn that raw material into an operational system. Today, there is still a great need to provide continuous and secure space asset monitoring. Almost all of the current SSA capacity is ground-based; Leolab in the US, for instance, has a significant market share. However, there is not yet any operational space-based SSA capabilities available in the market – even though there are many significant tactical and technical advantages of using space-based SSA. In the next decade, 49% of SB-SSA satellites are expected to be used for Space Surveillance & Tracking (SST) and 37% for Space Domain Awareness (SDA), according to NovaSpace.

Indeed, SB-SSA offers a discreet space asset tracking capability that is less vulnerable compared to its ground-based counterpart. A hostile country can locate an SSA ground based telescope. SB-SSA can observe and track at all orbit levels; it is just a matter of where you host your SSA payloads: in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) or Geostationary Orbit (GEO). Because there are no borders in space, SB -SSA offers another advantage: extra-territoriality. Ground based SSA requires local licensing to install and be operated.

We need to procure our cameras, sensors and software quickly, connect them, and get them into the hands of the people that matter. That in turn will require much more cooperation between European governments, defence agencies and private companies. And that begins by understanding that SSA is critical, and must be funded, scaled and used before a crisis exposes our weaknesses.

There isn’t a moment to lose.

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