Luxembourg is considering working with the US Space Force, the country’s defence minister announced at the opening of a satellite conference on Thursday.
In his opening remarks for the GovSat conference, green defence minister François Bausch stressed the importance of resilience in space capabilities, saying it was “crucial if we want to ensure continuity of services and avoid any disruption which could affect our daily lives in a negative manner.”
Cooperation with international partners was one way to boost resilience and the minister said that was why the defence ministry was exploring a “cooperation with the US space force in order to access the new innovative constellation of SES the O3B mPower.”
The constellation, which he described as a “contemporary to GovSat”, would offer “additional resilience”.
Luxembourg has a substantial stake in space, with its GovSat-1 communications satellite, a joint venture between the defence ministry and SES, which was deployed in January 2018. In 2023, it plans to deploy the overbudget earth observation satellite LuxEOSys.
At the conference, the minister announced the planned Monday release of the country’s first defence space strategy, which follows the country’s cyber security strategy published in 2021.
Bausch said a policy was needed as “space, along with cyber defence, has become a national security issue” because of state’s reliance on space assets.
Just hours before the opening of the one-day conference, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Minister Bausch said that it marked “a somber day in the history of Europe.”
He said: “Russia launched a major military attack on Ukraine this morning and Luxembourg strongly condemns this attack and this invasion on a peaceful sovereign land. This is not only not acceptable, but will have strong consequences all over Europe.”
Bausch did not mince his words about the relevance of space as a potential area of conflict, since almost all military operations rely on “space-derived data services and capacities.”
He said: “This evolution is even more worrisome as space race technologies have come to play a key role in ensuring national security, enabling peacekeeping operations and constant management as well ensuring the security of military operations.”
