Project Nyx Alpha: What Will UK Do With New Cyprus-Based Space Surveillance Telescope?

A dark horse UK-based company has been awarded a contract to build and operate a new “space domain awareness” telescope at a British military base in Cyprus. Sputnik reached out to one of Russia’s leading space researchers for insights on the project’s possible goals, and its geopolitical implications for Britain, its allies, and its adversaries.

SpaceFlux, a previously unheard of company created a year ago to “tackl[e] the problem of space congestion in view of rising satellite deployment,” has won what it says are “lucrative” contracts with Britain’s military and the civilian space agency to provide “space domain awareness services” via a network of ground-based optical telescopes and sensor systems across five continents.

The military contract, signed with UK Space Command, will necessitate the construction, operation and maintenance of a new telescope at one of Britain’s military bases on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The project lays at the heart of an MoD initiative known as “Project Nyx Alpha,” a military space domain awareness program designed to prevent British satellites and spacecraft from colliding with or being damaged by space junk and foreign nations’ spacecraft, accidentally or otherwise.

Space domain awareness “underpins our ability to protect and defend UK and allied interests in space,” UK Space Command chief Paul Godfrey said in the MoD’s announcement of the program.

“Space domain awareness underpins our ability to protect and defend UK and allied interests in space. The UK has critical assets in geostationary orbit, and Project Nyx Alpha will help us to monitor them more closely. It is great to see that UK Space Command and the [civilian space agency] are working with some of the most innovative UK space companies to develop our nation’s space capabilities,” Godfrey added.

Little is known about the mystery “innovative UK space company” behind the project. British government records indicate that SpaceFlux is registered in London, and that its CEO, one Marco Rocchetto, a 34-year-old British/Italian dual national businessman with a PhD in astrophysics and experience in data analytics, management, robotics, and telescope technology.

As for the telescope, little information about it has been made available, apart from the expectation that it will increase Britain’s orbital surveillance and targeting capabilities. The project is expected to already be up and running by next spring, and to be operated from the Space Operations Centre at the Royal Air Force’s base at High Wycombe, southern England. Cyprus was ostensibly picked due to its status as an “optimal vantage point” for monitoring objects and spacecraft in geostationary orbits, some 36,000 km above Earth’s equator.

Britain maintains two gigantic sovereign base areas on Cyprus in the south of the island, meaning the ability to keep the new telescope facility free of any unwanted prying eyes, if needed. The island is already known to be home to a top secret British internet surveillance hub, and to have played a key role in NATO’s surveillance and nuclear capabilities in the Mediterranean going back to the Cold War, despite Cyprus’s formally non-aligned status.

‘Wide Spectrum of Tasks’

Putting the new surveillance telescope in Cyprus will be “convenient for solving a wide spectrum of tasks” for London, Dr. Natan Eismont, a leading researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute, told Sputnik.

“One of the elements of the convenience of this location is good climate,” the researcher explained, noting that although Cyprus is situated in the Mediterranean, its atmosphere is “quite dry.”

“A dry atmosphere means less susceptibility to fluctuations. As the weather changes, so do the seasons. That is, this is the type of location chosen by all observers using optical telescopes,” which ideally require clear, dry air, Dr. Eismont said. “This requirement is fully satisfied by the place they chose.”

As for the capabilities SpaceFlux and by extension Britain will receive from the telescope’s use, the Russian researcher indicated as far as their publically stated goals are concerned, the Cyprus facility will definitely assist in the tasks of looking out for space objects among the most “congested” areas around the planet, including space junk.

Optical telescopes can look out for space junk that cannot be spotted using radio telescopes, which can detect objects larger than about 10 centimeters. Detecting objects smaller than that requires the use of optical telescopes. To date, only major space powers, including Russia and the US, have been equipped with the capabilities Britain is looking to receive.

“And of course there is the military sphere, where a surge in activity has now become obvious in terms of the launch of dual-purpose devices with military objectives and goals,” Esimont said. With its new telescope, Britain will not only get a leg up in its ability to identify potential adversaries’ space-based assets, but improve control over the “increasingly large groups” of assets operated by Britain and its allies, with optical observation being a “very important” component.

“As always, the tasks here are of a dual nature, both civil and defense. And they are doubtlessly among the list of tasks planned for those structures which are going to be located on Cyprus,” he said.

The Cyprus telescope will assist Britain’s military in collecting and processing intelligence observing very-low orbiting satellite constellations.

Accordingly, “one can look at the organization of an observatory by SpaceFlux as a reflection of this growing interest,” providing “supply” to meet the necessary “demand” to meet both civilian and military objectives.