Spain accelerates in the space race with Europe's first virtual teleport to avoid satellite congestion

Spain has just launched Europe's first virtual teleport, a pioneering solution developed by the Spanish technology company Integrasys that allows satellite networks to be controlled and managed without the need for satellite dishes or physical installations. The system, dubbed VirSat (an acronym for Virtual Satellite ), is hosted in the cloud and can be operated by public and private institutions from anywhere in the world, making it a disruptive tool for managing growing space traffic and an alternative for avoiding collisions in orbit.

With more than 12,000 active satellites orbiting the Earth—a figure that has quadrupled in the last five years—space congestion has become a major technical and strategic challenge. However, while satellite constellations proliferate, the ground infrastructure that operates them—the so-called teleport stations—has barely evolved in the 60 years since the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. VirSat changes that dynamic: it is the first European system capable of virtualizing satellite operations in a secure, flexible, and scalable way.

If airports are the nerve centers for airplanes, teleports are the same for satellites. But while the former have undergone a digital revolution, the latter remained anchored in analog technology.

VirSat is like going from fax to email in managing space traffic.

The platform, developed entirely in Spain, has already been tested in Luxembourg and the US, in addition to validation trials conducted in Madrid. According to the company, it can scale to meet the needs of governments, international organizations, and private operators. Key functions include automatic frequency allocation, signal monitoring, and remote maintenance of terminals for satellite communications, navigation, and Earth observation.

VirSat is based on the international DIFI standard, which ensures interoperability between analog and digital satellite signals. In addition, it is designed to integrate with cloud services such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, allowing for immediate deployment in any country or region.

“From Spain, we have digitized a critical infrastructure that hadn’t evolved in decades. VirSat is a paradigm shift, as it replaces antennas with software and cables with algorithms in a geopolitical context where control of the spectrum can no longer be left to third parties,” explains Álvaro Sánchez, CEO of Integrasys.