A Digital Alliance for “Space” within GAIA-X

• GAIA-X's mission is to strengthen digital European sovereignty by empowering the development of innovation data ecosystems 
• As Space is one of the new Big Data, on 17th of November 2020, and in the context of the launch of next GAIA-X phase, four European companies announce a new cross-border alliance to accelerate the development of “Space” data value creation 

Brussels, Luxembourg, Paris - November 17, 2020 - 3DS OUTSCALE, CS GROUP, EBRC and RHEA Group join their forces to develop new Trusted Services for the fast growing and sensitive “Space” industry, following and thereby stimulating the European GAIA-X initiative. 

This alliance, combining CS GROUP and RHEA Group, two major players in the Space Data Systems Industry with EBRC and 3DS OUTSCALE, two trusted and certified European Cloud Service Providers, will engage in developing new use cases in the Space industry guaranteeing the GAIA-X principles: European data protection, openness and transparency, authenticity and trust, European digital sovereignty, modularity and interoperability. 

The GAIA-X Digital Space Alliance for Space is open to other European partners. 

“GAIA-X: EU’s most important digital aspiration in a generation” 

Gaia-X is a strategic project initiated by Europe for Europe. GAIA-X aims at developing common requirements for a federated trustworthy and secured Data Infrastructure for Europe to Europe’s data sovereignty. With GAIA-X, Europe is building the launch pad for the « Airbus of Artificial Intelligence ».

GAIA-X ensuring efficient and trusted access to space-based data and related information

The Space Industry has experienced a major growth over the last two decades, with the implementation of major European and institutional satellite programs for navigation, communication and Earth observation, as well as through strong traditional and disruptive “New Space” commercial initiatives. As a result, the amount of space-generated data has surged. Today, our everyday life heavily relies on such data within many consumer & professional applications and use cases. Our dependency on space data and the information it provides demands that such data is handled securely, robustly, accurately, and efficiently, and that its European sovereignty is assured. This is the mission that the four core partners want to stimulate through the creation of this GAIA-X Digital Space Alliance.

This initiative could help develop new services to respond to European stakes: 

• To keep the business of ground segment development and mission operation in Europe, thanks to a federation of European cloud; 
• To use the processing power of European Cloud and then generating new business for European industry; 
• To keep European Space Data in Europe and foster the creation of new European business services leveraging this data; 
• To generate and reference European Space data to ease their integration in other markets; 
• To boost the business of European Ground Stations providers; 
• To accelerate time to market of future European new space missions.

“EBRC stands for: European Business Reliance Centre. We are deeply committed to the success of the GAIA-X project and are fully aligned with the objective of this ambitious European initiative. Headquartered in Luxembourg, seat of European Institutions, EBRC considers space as a strategic fast-growing industry. We are proud to bring to this alliance our “TrustedCloudEurope” and CyberResilience expertise,” announced Yves Reding, CEO EBRC. 

“Challenges for securing Space data and the related applications, and their end-users, today constitute a major concern across Europe. RHEA Group, as expert in end-to-end space engineering and space cybersecurity services, is convinced that long-term sustainability of those European societal upsides shall go through collaborative approach of the stakeholders, a secured and sovereign foundation that GAIA-X allows, and that we will leverage with our 3 core partners,” says André Sincennes, Managing Director of RHEA Group. 
 
“CS GROUP, expert in mission critical systems in strategic sectors especially in space industry, supports GAIA-X initiative to promote its fundamental values which are utmost importance to best serve our customers. Our open source and infrastructure agnostic strategy, which allows us to build non-locking solutions for our customers, will be an added-value to create new digital services for easier access to space: satellites, constellations and data,” says Sylvain D’HOINE, Executive Vice President in charge of Space Activities of CS GROUP.

“Through GAIA-X, we are building, all together, a sovereign and reliable digital infrastructure and an ecosystem for innovation in Europe. At the crossing of high security, reliability and sovereignty concerns, Space is among the core subjects that will deeply benefit from the GAIA-X initiative," says Servane Augier, Chief Operating Officer at 3DS OUTSCALE.

This Space initiative under the GAIA-X project is formed by four deeply motivated companies, founding members and Day-1 members of the GAIA-X Foundation: 

3DS OUTSCALE (outscale.com), the Cloud subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, places trust at the heart of its vision as a player in multi-local Cloud Computing. Its mission to offer hyper-trusted Cloud services is reflected in its promise to meet the highest market expectations, such as the SecNumCloud qualification delivered by ANSSI in 2019, making 3DS OUTSCALE the first Cloud provider to offer highly secure infrastructure services. This commitment is also supported by services and an organization that is fully certified in security in the Cloud (ISO 27001-27017-20178), and Health Data Hosting (HDS). As the Cloud Computing pure player in Europe, America and Asia, 3DS OUTSCALE offers a partitioning of Cloud regions and acts for strategic digital autonomy in Europe as a founding member of GAIA-X. 

CS GROUP (csgroup.eu) is the trusted partner for the engineering and integration of critical systems bringing its expertise in applications and mission-critical systems in a number of major economic sectors, in particular in defense and security, space, aeronautics and energy. Its Space Activities, gathering 450 persons in France, Germany, Holland and Romania, have been continuously innovating in secure digital technologies to deliver state of the art solutions for space, ground or embedded systems and applications that can be found at the heart of many civil and military programs. As supplier and partner of the CNES, the French national space research center and the European Space Agency (ESA), and the major satellite manufacturers, CS has been involved in most of the major European space programs for over 40 years.

EBRC (ebrc.com) aims at becoming a European excellence and trusted centre in the protection and management of sensitive information. Founded in 2000, EBRC has developed a unique value proposition for its clients and partners focused on trust and cyber-resilience: EBRC-Trusted Services Europe. EBRC is certified ISO 27001 (information security), ISO 22301 (business continuity), ISO 20000 (IT service management) and PCI DSS level 1 (payment security). EBRC and its subsidiary Digora employ 340 experts and consultants. From its three Tier IV certified Data Centres, EBRC operates its own sovereign European cloud, EBRC-Trusted Cloud Europe, offering public, private and hybrid deployment models, fully managed or unmanaged, over 100 international destinations.
 
RHEA Group (rheagroup.com) offers aerospace and security engineering services and solutions, system development, and technologies, including specialised fields such as aerospace concurrent design, system engineering & data processing, physical security and cybersecurity. RHEA Group employs more than 570 engineers and scientists worldwide. 
The company has supported more than 100 spacecraft missions and its top clients include the European Space Agency, Canadian Government, EUMETSAT, the European Commission, the GSA, EBU, CERN, NATO. Headquartered in Belgium, RHEA Group also operates in Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Luxembourg.