ESA inaugurates new Cyber Security Operations Centre in Darmstadt
On 27 May 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) took an important step in ensuring the continued security of its critical infrastructure with the inauguration of a new Cyber Security Operations Centre (C-SOC) at its European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Germany.
The new C-SOC will monitor and protect ESA’s digital assets – from satellites in space to ground stations and mission control systems on Earth. The initiative comes as space infrastructure becomes increasingly integral to Europe's economy and society, and as cyber threats grow more sophisticated.
“Cyber-resilience is an integral part of ESA’s Security Framework and the foundation for trust and collaboration in Europe and worldwide,” said Massimo Mercati, Head of ESA’s Security Office.
“Flying satellites requires cybersecurity measures that are highly specialised and context-aware. A mission control centre like ESOC that operates a fleet of unique satellites around Earth and across the Solar System presents a very different cyber-threat landscape than a traditional corporate IT environment and requires different, more sophisticated, solutions.”
While ESA has long maintained cybersecurity capabilities through the Agency’s Security Office and ESA’s Computer Emergency Response Team (ESACERT) at its ESRIN Centre for Earth Observation in Italy, the scale and complexity of today’s challenges necessitated the establishment of a new dedicated facility.
The C-SOC is a distributed facility operating across two ESA sites: ESOC in Germany and the European Space Security and Education Centre (ESEC) in Belgium.
“This dual-site design ensures operational resilience and redundancy. While ESEC focuses on corporate IT systems such as email and cloud infrastructure, and ESOC safeguards mission-critical systems that control spacecraft and process downlinked scientific data, each site is fully capable of supporting the other if needed,” explained Markus Rueckert, Head of Mission Operations Infrastructure IT at ESOC.
The C-SOC initiative also offers a boost to European industry. A consortium of 19 European companies led by Leonardo was involved in developing, integrating and validating the centre, while another consortium of Starion, Nexova, and NVISO is now taking over daily operations.
“The benefits of the centre extend beyond ESA,” said Mercati. “It is equipping European companies with the tools and experience to lead in a new and rapidly expanding frontier of cybersecurity for space. ESA’s C-SOC demonstrates how institutional space agencies can collaborate with industry to protect critical assets and foster innovation in the growing space economy.”
The development of the C-SOC was funded by ESA’s General Support Technology Programme, which supports the development of promising engineering concepts into operational technologies.
For more information please go to: ESA