Indra wins the contract to provide the German Air Force with a space surveillance radar
Following approval by the German Parliament, Indra has signed a contract with the Federal Procurement Office (BAAINBw) of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) to provide its Air Force, the Luftwaffe, with a state-of-the-art radar for detecting objects in low space orbits.
The system will protect the satellites in service from possible impact with debris from other missions that orbit uncontrollably at high speed and can damage or disable them. It will also help to protect them by monitoring any attempt by other satellites to approach them in order to compromise their mission or collect information about them.
Indra, through its German subsidiary, and as a leading company in the aerospace and defence sector, was invited to participate in this tender, in which it was selected thanks to the proven maturity of its space radar, its high performance and its modular and flexible design, which allows for a progressive increase in its capabilities.
The director of Integrated Defence Systems at Indra, Manuel Ruiz, emphasised that ‘this type of radar protects space assets on which services essential to our society depend, such as communications, transport, logistics and meteorological information. We are very proud to be working with the Bundeswehr on what will be one of the most sophisticated radars with the greatest range in the world and we are grateful for the support that the CDTI, the Spanish Space Agency and the Spanish Space Command have given us for the development of this technology’.
The German Space Command (WRKdoBw) will be in charge of operating this space surveillance radar, accessing it remotely from the space situation centre (WRLageZ) located in Uedem.
Data on objects in near-Earth orbits will be catalogued and used as the basis for dedicated tracking of objects of interest. This will be done using a combination of Indra's radar and other additional sensors available to the country, such as recently acquired telescopes, which form a network of sensors for space situational awareness.
The acquisition of the space radar is part of the German programme called ‘L-GUARD’ (LEO - Groundbased Upscaled AESA RaDar), which in turn is part of the Space Surveillance system (SysWRÜbw).
The decision to award this important contract to Indra reinforces European collaboration and the continent's technological sovereignty over a capability that is critical to the security and well-being of its citizens. This makes the most of the experience of Indra, which has developed and supplied the S3TSR space surveillance radar, which is the main sensor of the Space Operations and Surveillance Centre of the Spanish Space Command and which is in turn integrated into the surveillance network of the EU-SST (European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking Partnership) consortium.
One of the main functions of this consortium is to generate a catalogue with detailed information on active and inactive satellites and space debris, which is essential for predicting and avoiding collisions in space and protecting space missions and terrestrial infrastructures by calculating the trajectory of re-entry and fragmentation. The project that Germany is now undertaking gives new impetus to the development of increasingly advanced radars that will ensure Europe's free access to and use of space.
