Spain and France will share their next space challenge

The cordial relations between the Kingdom of Spain and the French Republic are so close that even the satellites of both countries travel into space together. This was agreed by the Spanish Minister of Science and Innovation, Pedro Duque, and the French Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Frédérique Vidal, who decided to put their last two state-owned space platforms into orbit simultaneously, which will happen at the end of August.

The Spanish one is the Ingenio electro-optical observation satellite, owned by the Centre for Technological and Industrial Development (CDTI), a public business entity responsible for representing and managing Spain's interests in the European Space Agency (ESA) and in the main international forums and programmes in the sector. 

The French one is called Taranis and is a small scientific platform developed by the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), the French public agency responsible for the country's space activities, both civil and military. While Ingenio's raison d'être is to take about 270 images a day and cover more than 2.5 million square kilometers every 24 hours, Taranis' is purely scientific.

The cameras and sensors on board the small French platform go hunting and capture data and images of the very violent electrical phenomena observed by the astronauts from the International Space Station and are imperceptible to the human eye from the Earth. The fact that both spaceships take off and are placed in their respective locations around the Earth by the same launcher, on the same day and at almost the same time, is due to a series of circumstances, some technical and others fortuitous.

First of all, both accumulate serious delays and need to be put into orbit as soon as possible. The last setback was due to the coronavirus, which left both of them on the ground when their launch was already scheduled for June. In addition to the hurry, Ingenio weighs 800 kilos and the European launcher Vega, which has to transport it into space, has a load capacity of up to 1.5 tons. This is where Taranis comes in.

Because it is so small and weighs only 200 kilos, it can be accommodated in the Vega rocket without any problem. Furthermore, travelling on the same space flight allows for the sharing of launch costs, which are of the order of 38 million euros, benefiting both the Spanish and French coffers.

And, as if that were not enough, one will be placed at an altitude of 670 kilometres (Ingenio) and the other at 700 kilometres (Taranis), in an orbit that in both cases passes through the Earth's poles. This compatibility is ideal for the twinning of the Spanish and French interests of the CDTI, directed by Javier Ponce, and the CNES, presided over by Jean-Yves Le Gall.

Ingenio has already passed all the tests and trials to be placed in space, with the security provided by the technicians that it will work correctly. The final approval was received on April 23rd, when an independent team of ESA engineers signed the contract and approved the exhaustive tests carried out to authorize its takeoff.

Waiting to be sent to South America so that in the last week of August it can take off from the Kurú space base in French Guyana, Ingenio is at the Madrid headquarters of Airbus Space Systems España, the company responsible for its development and manufacture. It is protected by three anti-contamination barriers and isolated in a room under constant temperature and pressure conditions, while it is remotely supervised by the team of technicians led by the project's leader, Oriol Álvarez. 

Once in orbit and having passed all the validations prior to its entry into service, the CDTI will transfer its property to the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA), the public research agency of the Ministry of Defence led by Air Lieutenant General José María Salom, which will be in charge of its control and monitoring during its planned 5-year operational life.

Considered "the largest space project in Spanish industry", its cameras and sensors will provide Spanish and foreign institutions with colour and black and white images that will serve to improve urban management, environmental monitoring and aid in situations of catastrophes, fires and floods. In its security and defence aspect, it will be used to monitor land and sea borders and to provide images to the Defence Staff to guarantee the security of Spanish military units in operations abroad.

While Ingenio is waiting in Madrid for the moment to travel to South America, the French engineers are working hard to finish the last details about Taranis in the city of Toulouse, once the tests and trials that have been carried out in the last months are finished. 

Named after the Celtic god of thunder, Taranis will study the gigantic, mysterious and very violent "lightning transient effects", a set of phenomena of electrical discharges that occur above large storm clouds. In the form of red and blue explosions, they project a hundred kilometres into space, but, unlike lightning that falls on the surface of the Earth, they are not visible to the human eye.

Taranis will be the first satellite dedicated to the observation and characterisation of the aforementioned strange radioactive light phenomena, which generate gamma rays, ultraviolet emissions and electromagnetic pulses and which are studied by Professor Víctor Reglero and his team at the Image Processing Laboratory of the University of Valencia.