The Spanish Air Force visits our space surveillance facilities in Castilla La Mancha
The students and teachers of the first Space Operations course of the Spanish Air Force carried out on November 27 a visit to the Elecnor Deimos facilities in Castilla La Mancha, in order to know first-hand the operational surveillance system, together with the satellite integration and control facilities.
12th of December, 2019
Representatives of Air Force Plans Division of the Chief of Staff and Air Force Command and Control System, headed by their respective chiefs, Generals D. Juan Pablo Sánchez de Lara and D. Juan Francisco Sanz Diaz, made a visit on December 12 to our space surveillance facilities located on the Niefla mountain and in Puertollano. In addition to knowing the satellite systems design and integration facilities, during the visit they participated in the sequence of planning, image acquisition and processing operations carried out at the Deimos Sky Survey space surveillance center.
A few days before, students and teachers of the first Space Operations Course of the Spanish Air Force carried out on November 27 a visit to the Elecnor Deimos facilities in Castilla La Mancha, in order to know first hand the operational surveillance system, together with the satellite integration and control facilities.
At present, space systems and their applications are essential for the society dynamics and daily elements in the lives of citizens: meteorology, communications, financial systems or road trips – to mention some examples – would be radically different if they could not count on the space infrastructure and solutions. Also in the military context, space is an essential tool for positioning, guidance, navigation and control, knowledge of the situation and early warning, used in strategical, operational and tactical decision making. Therefore, the Armed Forces from our environment speak about space as a new domain of action that requires specific preparation for the exploitation of space systems for Defense missions, as well as the protection of these infrastructures.
As part of this preparation, the Air Force organizes this first Space Operations Course during the month of November 2019. This course, in addition to teaching specific subjects of space systems, includes a small number of visits by its 22 students to relevant facilities in Spain such as Deimos Engineering and Systems in Puertollano, which house a integration clean room and functional tests of satellites, the Deimos-2 satellite control center and ground station and the Deimos Sky Survey (DeSS) orbital observation center .
