The Minister of National Defense, João Gomes Cravinho, visited the Pampilhosa da Serra Space Observatory – PASO, last October 13th, a structure located in the village of Porto da Balsa, which recently received the installation of a telescope that is at the service of the Ministry of National Defense.

This official visit happens in the scope of the Project “Space Surveillance and Tracking 2020 (SST 2020)”, in which main objectives are assessing and reducing the risks to in-orbit operations of European spacecraft from collisions, reducing the risks relating to the launch of European spacecraft and surveying uncontrolled re-entries of spacecraft or space debris into the Earth's atmosphere.

This is an EU/H2020 project in implementation jointly by IT, MND, and the Municipality of Pampilhosa da Serra with other several partners, and conducted by the IT’s research team Domingos da Silva Barbosa, José Miguel da Silva Bergano, Paulo Alexandre Carapinha Marques, and Bruno David Fernandes Coelho.