The European Commission officially approved the participation of Belgium, Bulgaria, of Lithuania and Luxembourg in the space surveillance and tracking program (SST) of the EU space program.
EU SST program, which currently consists of 15 participants, uses a network of sensors to survey and track space objects, providing collision avoidance services, atmospheric reentry analysis and fragmentation assessment, which, according to the Commission, protect over 600 European satellites.
At the end 2024 year Belgium, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Luxembourg have officially declared their interest in joining the SST Partnership. Subsequently, in June 2025 year, The Commission adopted the Implementation Decision, which outlines the procedure for accepting new members into the partnership. Between June and August, four Member States submitted applications to the Commission, which were recognized as such, that meet the requirements, In September 2025 year. 17 December 2025 the Commission approved all four applications, regarding partnership.
The next step in this process will be the signing of all relevant EU SST agreements to include the new countries. At the same time, the EU is also continuing work on plans to extend the grant, which will ensure co-financing of the EU SST program until mid 2028 year.
The SST program is one of the three components of space situational awareness (SSA) EU. In turn, SSA is studying, monitors and mitigates space hazards. Two other components of the SSA program – this is the study of near-Earth objects (NEO), which relate to natural space objects, such as asteroids and comets, and space weather phenomena (SWE), which focus on developing space weather models.
Source: https://europeanspaceflight.com