Hisdesat

Hisdesat is a satellite services operator based in Madrid, Spain. It was founded in 2001 to serve government customers in defence, security, intelligence and foreign affairs. Public bodies and major Spanish aerospace companies are among its shareholders.

Since 2005, Hisdesat has provided secure satellite communications to government agencies in several countries. It sells X-band and Ka-band services for government use only, both military and civil. After the launch of its PAZ satellite in 2018, it added earth observation and satellite-based ship tracking to its work.

Its secure communications system uses two satellites in orbit. XTAR-EUR sits at 29 degrees East and covers an area from Brazil to Indonesia, including Europe, Africa, the Middle East and much of Asia. SpainSat sits at 30 degrees West and covers almost all of the Americas, plus Africa, Europe and the Middle East. SpainSat cost a total of 223 million euros. Control centres and tracking stations are in Spain, Canada and the United States.

The next step is the SPAINSAT NG programme. It has two satellites that will work in the X band, the military Ka band and the UHF band. Spanish industry supplies the communication payloads. Airbus in Spain builds the X-band payload, and Thales Alenia Space in Spain builds the UHF and Ka-band payloads. Both satellites use the Eurostar Neo platform from Airbus. The work has support from the European Space Agency and Spain's industrial technology centre.

PAZ is a radar satellite that Hisdesat owns and operates. It launched in February 2018 on a Falcon 9 rocket. It takes more than one hundred images a day at one-metre resolution, by day or night and in any weather. It orbits fifteen times a day at 514 kilometres and covers the whole Earth with an average revisit time of 24 hours. Images support border control, environmental monitoring, mapping, planning and military use.

Hisdesat also builds services from PAZ images. These include maritime surveillance against illegal fishing and dumping, alerts for deforestation and illegal mining, and checks on ground movement in cities and near infrastructure. A risk and emergency mapping service shows the scale of natural disasters. The company also offers ship position data from a satellite AIS network provided through Spire and exactEarth.

Services

• Secure satellite communications
• X-band and Ka-band services
• Earth observation
• Satellite AIS ship tracking
• Maritime surveillance
• Deforestation and illegal mining alerts
• Ground deformation monitoring
• Risk and emergency mapping
• Ground control