Visiting Redu on Wednesday, ESA's new director general since March, Josef Aschbacher, said he wanted to convince the Council of Ministers to invest 30 million in the further development of space cybersecurity expertise at the Belgian site. (Photo: ESA)

Visiting Redu on Wednesday, ESA's new director general since March, Josef Aschbacher, said he wanted to convince the Council of Ministers to invest 30 million in the further development of space cybersecurity expertise at the Belgian site. (Photo: ESA)

The European Space Agency (ESA) will invest €30m from 2023 to 2025 in space cybersecurity and education, mainly at the Belgian hub of Redu-Transinne, the organisation’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, announced on Wednesday.

The European Space Agency once again emphasised the role of the Redu site in space cybersecurity on Wednesday during a visit by Aschbacher. The centre in Redu was created in 1968 and took on new management in 2016.

“There are about 3,500 satellites in service around the earth at the moment,” he said as reported by in Belgium. “The protection of the information flows that come from these satellites is crucial for almost all our activities on Earth. I am thinking of course of ESA’s activities, but also those of our partners, for example the European Union or the European Defence Agency, and then those of all the users of this data.”

Redu is a strategic site for Luxembourg. It is a back-up for satellite operator SES, headquartered in Betzdorf, and will also accommodate ground stations for the Luxeosys . 

This conversion of the Redu centre into the main space cybersecurity centre by 2025 will have to be validated by the next ESA ministerial council in November 2022.

The European Space Safety and Education Centre (ESEC) in Redu, will host a so-called C-SOC (Cyber Safety and Security Operational Centre), a system for the cyber protection of resources and services supported by a private consortium in which the security engineering group Rhea (Wavre) is notably involved, .

had increased its involvement two years ago, when the cyber security centre was first launched.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.