Defense Innovation Prize for 2022 Awarded to Share My Space
Share My Space has been awarded the 2022 Defense Innovation Prize. Born in 2018, this European Defense Agency (EDA) award is now well-known within the European community. A symbol of technological innovation, it represents a brilliant way to reach out to outstanding companies and include them in the construction of European defense capabilities.
“No sensor at ground level can give that kind of precision.”
Norbert Pouzin, a Spaceflight Dynamics Engineer at Share My Space.
This year’s edition covered space-based surveillance and reconnaissance defense technologies. The EDA, in close collaboration with the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office, was looking to award ground-breaking technologies for military and dual-use operations with a special focus on debris and artificial orbiting objects. The 2022 evaluation committee comprised EDA and European Space Agency (ESA) staff.
Given this edition’s theme, Share My Space’s team was extremely motivated to conceptualize one of its innovative projects: the Complete Object Monitoring for Precise and Active Space Surveillance (COMPASS).
Defense Innovation Prize Recognizes COMPASS Technology
COMPASS represents the next step toward space safety and sustainability. While Share My Space currently engages in orbital object tracking thanks to its ground-based telescopes, COMPASS, a space observation system, would constitute a significant additional asset for accurate cataloging.
COMPASS is a satellite constellation of 12 micro-satellites in Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). It would provide real-time space domain awareness of more than 30,000 orbital objects on all orbits in 2025 and 100,000 objects in 2027. Together, ground and space-based systems will form an unprecedented space surveillance capability, operational for EDA member states, civilians, and private customers.
“No sensor at ground level can give that kind of precision,” says Norbert Pouzin, a Spaceflight Dynamics Engineer at Share My Space. “To have precise and accurate data on all orbits, at a high time-frequency, you need the combination of a ground-based and space-based observation system. A surveillance constellation will only be high-performance with a full network of ground-based sensors linked to it.”
This project led Share My Space to win the EDA €30,000 (≈$32,000) in prize money, an outstanding reward that demonstrates European interest in COMPASS and its credibility.
“This year, we added an incentive to promote the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises, including start-ups, and give them the opportunity to bring their innovative proposals to the defense sector,” said Jean-François Ripoche, EDA Director for Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI).
"(Share My Space was selected because) it proved to be very innovative, proposing a solution based on a dedicated satellites’ constellation which would provide more continuous coverage and high accuracy position of the detected objects," he continued. "By combining this architecture and the latest optical sensors technology, this proposal will put EU defense at the forefront in space surveillance. As the amount of space junk is set to steadily increase, Share My Space’s proposal could not have come sooner."
(Source: Share My Space and EDA news releases. Images provided)