The Greek Space Service is established by a law draft, which is immediately submitted to the Parliament, by the Ministry of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Information.
The Greek Space Service will have the form of an anonymous company under the name National Center for Space Applications (EKDE) and will cover Greece's major deficit in the field.
With the launch this year of the Hellas Sat satellite, commercial opportunities are being created which, according to information from the Ministry of Digital Governance, will be utilized by a space policy company, comparable to European data. The Hellenic Space Agency is expected to take over the leasing—based on private-economic criteria—of the available transponders that will not be used by the Greek public sector (for military, television and other applications). Additionally, research and scientific applications will be utilized within the framework of civil protection, Earth monitoring, fire prevention and response, illegal construction, etc.
The EKDE will be interconnected as a hub with important Greek and international research centers, will interconnect research with the production of Greek companies, will facilitate the exploitation of applications by the Hellenic Aerospace Defense Forces and the Hellenic Army, the pursuit of research programs and programs for the co-production of weapons systems with the Hellenic Army, the Hellenic Aerospace Defense Forces and NATO, as well as the absorption of European funds for space research and technology.
In his statements on the matter, the Minister of Digital Policy, Telecommunications and Information, Nikos Pappas, noted that “we are doing the obvious. Because it is simply unimaginable that our country does not have a space service today. It is unimaginable that in the recent past, and with the responsibility of the then governments, we essentially “blocked” our rights in the space spectrum. Greece is among the few European countries that do not have an organization that utilizes its commercial, scientific and research rights, nor the multitude of research and scientific applications and resources that the European Space Agency possesses. It is characteristic that
1. Turkey has, recently, created its own space policy organization,
2. Greece simply is absent from the EU ministers' meetings responsible for space policy and
3. over the last 20 years, we have spent hundreds of millions as a country on our participation in European programs such as Galileo, which we do not utilize, due to the absence of specialized, high-level personnel who can respond directly to the coordination of government work and representation in EU and UN regarding the peaceful use of outer space," concluded Nikos Pappas.
Source: https://www.documentonews.gr/article/kai-egeneto-ellhnikh-diasthmikh-yphresia
