European Standards for the space industry
In 2011 CEN received a mandate from the European Commission (Mandate 496) requesting the development of European Standards for the space industry.
Already in 2007 CEN accepted a first mandate (Mandate 415) whose output was a list of space related areas which needed consolidating in Europe through standardization. Ten areas were identified at the time. Through Mandate 496, CEN is now requested to actually develop standards in these ten fields.
To this end, CEN and CENELEC (the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization) created a new joint Technical Committee, CEN-CENELEC/TC 5 "Space". Its mission is to actually respond to Mandate 496. Foreseen is that the Technical Committee will gather the expertise from all the major European space stakeholders, and in particular from the European Cooperation for Space Standardization (ECSS).
CEN, and its sister organisation CENELEC, are currently tightening their relationship with ECSS with a view to ensuring that both parties cooperate efficiently in developing European Standards under Mandate 496.
If you wish to obtain more information on this new endeavour, please contact Amilcar Da Costa.