June 1, 2021 – A consortium of Belgian companies led by RHEA Group and including SatADSL and ST Engineering iDirect, has been awarded a contract by ESA to develop and run an enhanced satellite communications PSS. The dual-use digital platform, called Secure PSS Hub, will have an innovative mission configurator and ‘built-in’ security and reliability feature to provide secure and guaranteed access to satellite communications for a wide range of users. The pooling and sharing services will be built on ST Engineering iDirect’s Newtec Dialog® platform which will provide strengthened security features. Once operational, RHEA’s security team based in Diegem and Redu in Belgium together with its partner SatADSL, based in Brussels, who will commercially operate the resulting PSS Platform, will be able to offer secure PSS services to users anywhere in the world and serve Institutional and Governmental customers worldwide, integrating offers from different commercial satcom resource providers. Pooling and sharing satellite communication capacity from multiple satcom satellite operators in a secure manner provides an innovative alternative, cost-effective way for users to gain access to secure communications services and can be particularly beneficial if they are required at short notice or if they are used for communications between governmental agencies or between governments.