As a major player of the European Space sector, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) designs and participates in numerous Space programmes. In that context, the French space agency is required to develop, maintain and operate Space systems as well as ground segments. Hence the importance of framework agreements with companies or company consortia.

Following a negotiated tender procedure, CNES in Toulouse has recently extended the renewal of several framework cooperation agreements with SPACEBEL until 2028.

These three framework contracts in the field of on-board engineering and Space computing cover the following segments:

• Under the leadership of Thales, we continue our collaboration regarding control centres, mission centres, scientific image and data processing systems and data enhancement systems.
• With the framework agreement for engineering and operations for Space mechanics and on-board/ground activities – i.e. the "System Simulation Infrastructure" segment, SPACEBEL, as sole contractor, is further bringing our expertise in the development and maintenance of simulation architectures for orbital and balloon systems, in particular the BASILES multi-mission infrastructure. These simulators use high-performance visualisation tools such as VTS (Visualisation Tool Systems) or PrestoTools.
• Finally, with on-board/ground engineering and testing services, SPACEBEL and Thales bring their respective know-how in terms of on-board system simulation, command and control functions, Attitude and Orbit Control System (AOCS), flight software and satellite operations.

A framework agreement related to launcher engineering has also been concluded within the Thales consortium for CNES in Paris.

Activities are scheduled to start at the end of January 2023.

With this recent series of framework agreements, SPACEBEL is honoured to be able to strengthen our presence on Space missions of CNES, which we wish to thank for its renewed trust.