The redundant station will be located at INTA's Maspalomas Space Station as the main control and tracking station to provide service to the SpainSat NG, Europe's most advanced satellites in the field of defense and secure communications. GMV will first be responsible for the integration of all systems and subsystems and the horizontal services that the two SpainSat NGs will manage from the ground. The multinational will also undertake the deployment of control centers, which will be equipped with the most advanced technologies, especially in the telecommunications payload control system. This system is especially complex in software-defined satellites such as SpainSat NG.
In addition, it will be in charge of the development and implementation of the system responsible for monitoring the payload of satellites in their different bands (X, Ka and UHF). Last June, Hisdesat called an international competition for the execution of the ground segment of the SPAINSAT NG program divided into four lots due to its size. GMV, which competed with the most relevant companies in the sector, won the bulk of the project by presenting the best technical offers.
Hisdesat, the Spanish government satellite services company, reported that it has formalized an agreement with the North American company SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, to put the two SPAINSAT NG satellites (I and II) into orbit. This agreement, which contemplates the use of the reusable Falcon 9 launcher to launch the two satellites into orbit, continues the agreement that the two companies sealed in 2018 for the launch of the PAZ satellite. On this occasion, the launches will be carried out from any of the two launch complexes that SpaceX uses in Florida, both the CCAFS SLC-40 (Cape Canaveral Station) and the KSC LC 39a (NASA Kennedy Space Center). The first of the devices, the SpainSat NG I, is scheduled to be launched into orbit in 2024, in the geostationary position 29º East, while the second, the SpainSat NG II, will be launched throughout 2025 and will be located in the position 30º West. They will have a useful life of about 15 years, meaning they will be at full capacity until the threshold of 2040.
