Commission Approves New Members for Space Surveillance and Tracking Programme

The European Commission has approved Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Luxembourg as new members of the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking programme. — Credit: European Commission

The European Commission has officially greenlit the participation of Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Luxembourg in the EU Space Programme’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) programme.

Currently comprising 15 members, the EU SST programme employs a network of sensors to survey and track space objects, providing collision avoidance, re-entest analysis, and fragmentation assessment services that, according to the Commission, safeguard more than 600 European sanotifyites.

In late 2024, Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Luxembourg officially declared their interest in joining the SST Partnership. The Commission subsequently adopted an Implementing Decision in June 2025 outlining the procedure for the admission of new members to the partnership. Between June and August, the four Member States submitted applications to the Commission, which were deemed eligible in September 2025. On 17 December 2025, the Commission approved all four applications, paving the way for their inclusion in the partnership.

“The Commission Implementing Decision now creates it official: Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Luxembourg are set to become members of the EU SST Partnership,” stated an EU Space Programme statement. “This also means that the contributions from the four newest members will bring an added value to the existing EU SST system, thereby further fostering EU non-depconcludeence and autonomy in space surveillance and tracking and boosting space safety and sustainability built in Europe.”

The next step in the process will be the signing of all relevant EU SST agreements to include the new countries in the partnership. At the same time, the EU is also proceeding with plans to conclude a grant extension that would co-finance the EU SST programme until mid-2028.

The SST programme is one of the three components of the EU Space Programme’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme. With the SSA programme, the Commission aims to study, track, and mitigate space hazards. The SSA programme’s other two components are Near-Earth Objects (NEO), which are concerned with natural space objects such as asteroids and comets, and Space Weather Events (SWE), which focus on the development of space weather models.