The space technology industry has experienced impressive growth in recent decades, with its “launch” being caused by the significant innovations brought about by the dynamics of private companies.

Companies that also work together with their countries to conquer new space technological horizons. Particularly in the field of satellite communications, however, Greece’s space position in the sky is envied even by large countries in terms of economic size because there are two satellites operating there.

“Today, Greece is one of the four countries in Europe that has satellites when several countries today, very large indeed, such as Germany, the Netherlands and others, due to the geopolitical situations are looking for and want to find a way to have their own satellites. This in itself should make us proud, since in Greece and Cyprus there has been an invaluable space know-how for years”, noted Mr. Christodoulos Protopapas, speaking on the occasion of World Space Week on the radio station of APE MPE, “Agency 104.9FM”, CEO of Hellas Sat. “All modern technologies are applied first in Space, then in Defense and then in everyday life, we enjoy them…“, he added.

A small “club”

“Specifically, today there is only France that has the Eutelsat satellites, Luxembourg with the Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA), Spain with the Hispasat Organization and Greece with Hellas Sat in Europe. The existence of Hellas Sat also means important know-how for Greece and Cyprus where dozens of specialist scientists have work, with a significant specialization in fact, something that Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium do not have. At the same time, however, in a possible time of crisis, there is a “super ship” at the disposal of Greece and Cyprus, something that countries like the above do not have, which are large, richer and rely, for example, if necessary, on the French or the Luxembourgish. It is a great advantage of a country to be in such a position as Greece is, as you cannot, in a difficult time, know what the geopolitical correlations will be at that moment…“, emphasized Mr. Protopapas.

For the country to be in such a position, developments took place over time. “In Greece, the discussion on Space officially began in 1993 when the first Space Committee was established by the decision of the then general secretary of telecommunications at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, while in Cyprus the discussion began in 1994, a year later with the establishment of the Cyprus Space Committee. The work of these two groups was the basis on which the 2001 licensing of Hellas Sat in Zappeio took place”, recounted Mr. Protopapas.

Europe and the next day in space

“Europe must fight to be at the cutting edge of both space technologies and new developments such as the use of quantum coding and quantum computing technologies in space systems – something that Greece and Cyprus must also look at very seriously“, explained the CEO of Hellas Sat, who emphasized that the new satellite being planned will have state-of-the-art elements.

“Moving on to the new satellite. We are talking about visual communications. Optical communications are not interfered with, they are secure, they are very fast. From this particular satellite that will be an information bridge in Space, we will have a total volume of information exchange of terabit size in space, optical fiber speed. The technology has now matured and since it has matured, we said that we must prepare the new Hellas Sat 5 using such technology. We were waiting for these technologies to be mature so that we could be the first”, he said, commenting on the installation of high-speed optical laser telecommunications on the Hellas Sat satellite 5 the top executive of Hellas Sat. For the Optical Communications Payload, the high-speed laser optical telecommunications of the satellite that is planned to be placed and hosted on the new Hellas Sat 5, a Memorandum of Cooperation was signed at the beginning of the year between Hellas Sat and the European company Thales Alenia Space France. A milestone in the development of the new satellite that came after preliminary work that began a few years ago in which Greeks, Cypriots and Europeans defined the necessary technologies.

As for what is needed for a country to develop in the field of space technology, on the occasion of World Space Week, Mr. Protopapas commented that this is not a professional area where “dry” management capabilities move things forward. “A space organization is not like any other business in that there needs to be a space culture that is completely different from the …normal culture of a purely for-profit business…“, he commented.

But is there anything left that can fascinate us in the field of technology related to Space?

“Space is always fascinating. Space technology is a cutting edge thing today. It is the highest technology applied along with military technology“, replied the CEO of Hellas Sat.