"ASTRO+ a step forward for Space and Security"

After September 11 and March 11 in Madrid the fight against, terrorism becomes a priority for all European Union Member States. The causes of terrorism, often originate outside the European Union and are linked to external regional conflict or humanitarian crises. Regional insecurities can fuel the organised crime, lead to extremism and reinforce the international terrorism. The ambition of the European Commission ASTRO+ project was to give the first Space global response to this overall challenge. At a time when Space technologies are often perceived as a domain of experts, ASTRO+ demonstrated that Space can be more accessible for security players. ASTRO+ has been a first stage, with the development of the first integrated Space platform for security operations: ldr Through a capacity process, the different type of European operational users has been positioned in the heart of the project: to identify the needs, to elaborate an operational scenario, to map the space technologies and to support the demonstration. About 150 operational users where associated: civil protection, police forces, military staff and NGO's from different EU countries. ldr This represents the first consistent integration of the different space assets such as Earth Observation, Navigation and Satellite Telecommunication in a coordinated way. The exercises done in Poland show to the 25 EU members the first common vision of the Space contribution to security operations. The aim of this paper is, firstly, to recall the overall restitution of the project in terms of operational users networking, space technologies response and with a realistic on-the-field demonstration.