GMV to provide the Paz satellite control center

The mission control center of the new Spanish satellite Paz, due for launch at the end of next year, will be provided by GMV. The contract includes all platform-planning and image-capturing aspects, orbital control and antenna pointing plus management and monitoring of communications and onboard equipment. GMV will also provide the radar-image-distribution and user-management system.

Paz is a military earth-observation satellite orbiting at a height of 514 kilometers above the poles. It has been designed for applications of surveillance, high resolution mapping, border control, tactical support on foreign missions, crisis and risk management, assessment of natural disasters, environmental control and maritime surveillance. Each day it will cover over 300,000 square kilometers of the earth’s surface.

This satellite comes under the National Earth Observation Program (Programa Nacional de Observación de la Tierra: PNOT) created by the Ministry of Defense and Industry and the Ministry of Tourism and Trade back in 2007. INTA (Spanish Aerospace Technology Institute) was commissioned to develop the ground segment for the PAZ satellite, an earth observation system with synthetic aperture radar technology designed to meet operational requirements, mainly of a defense and security nature but also with civil applications in the field of high resolution observation.

GMV is leader in space-mission ground segments and is now the world’s top independent supplier of ground control systems for commercial telecommunication satellite operators. In this particular project it will be working with a 3-million euro budget. In the words of Jorge Potti, GMV’s Aerospace General Manager, “the development of PAZ’s control center represents an exhilarating challenge for GMV, in keeping with its past experience in this field, since it is a complex mission from the technological point of view with a very tight delivery schedule”.

The satellite weighs about 1400 kilos and is 5 meters long with a diameter of 2.4 meters and a hexagonal profile. Each day it will lap the world 15 times at a speed of 7 kilometers per second, overflying Spain 2.6 times a day.

PNOT also comprises another optical technology satellite called INGENIO. Together they will facilitate global observation of the national territory, making Spain Europe’s first country with a dual observation system (optical and radar) with a twofold use, civil and military. Once operative these satellites will lend themselves to a whole host of applications.