Space Situational Awareness Programme
The Space Safety Programme, formerly the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme, is the European Space Agency's (ESA) initiative to monitor hazards from space, determine their risk, make this data available to the appropriate authorities and where possible, mitigate the threat.[1]
The SSA Programme was designed to support
- Space weather: monitoring the Sun, the solar wind, and in Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere, that can affect spaceborne and ground-based infrastructure or endanger human life or health. This data is processed by the Space Weather Service Network and made available freely via the Space Weather Portal. Upcoming missions such as Vigil will contribute to this monitoring system, allowing for timely warnings.[5]
- comets, which can potentially impact Earth,gathering observations from telescopes around the world and plotting their path through the sky to calculate the impact risk,[6] as well as coordinating with the international community the response to a possible impactor, through groups such as the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG). ESA will soon launch the Hera mission, a follow-up to NASA's DART mission which performed the first kinetic impact test of Planetary Defence on 26 September 2022. Hera will rendezvous with the impacted Didymos binary asteroid system to study the crater formed, the dust plume released and more.[7]
- Space debris: Tracking active and inactive satellites and space debris to better understand the debris environment; providing data, analysis and advice to spacecraft engineers to perform collision avoidance manoeuvres as well as developing a system of automated collision avoidance. The space debris office also works with the international community on norms and standards for the sustainable future of space.[8]
- Clean Space: systematically considering the entire life-cycle of space activities, from the early stages of conceptual design to the mission’s end of life – and even beyond, to removal of space debris.[9] ESA Clean Space includes EcoDesign, embedding environmental sustainability within space mission design; Management of end-of-life, developing technologies to prevent the creation of future debris; in-orbit servicing/active debris removal, removing spacecraft from orbit and demonstrating in-orbit servicing of spacecraft. The first mission to remove a piece of space debris from orbit will be the ESA-commissioned Clearspace-1.
The Space Safety programme is being implemented as an optional ESA programme with financial participation by 14 Member States. The programme started in 2009 and its mandate was extended until 2019. The second phase of the programme received €46.5 million for the 2013–2016 period.[4]
Space weather segment
The main objective of the space weather segment (SWE) is to detect and forecast of
Near-Earth object segment
The
Space surveillance and tracking segment
The SST segment's primary goal is the detection, cataloguing and orbit prediction of objects orbiting the Earth. It is part of an effort to avoid collisions between orbiting satellites and debris, provide safe reentries, detect on-orbit explosions, assist missions at launch, deployment and end-of-life and overall reduce cost of space access. The segment currently relies on existing European radar and optical systems. Some of its assets are existing
The radar-based SST assets are split into two categories: surveillance and tracking systems. SSA SST radar systems include:[13]
- Surveillance
- Northern Cross transient radio telescope located at the Medicina Radio Observatory, serving as a receiver in bistatic radar system
- phased array radar, serving as a monostatic system
- French Air Force bistatic radar-based space surveillance system GRAVES
- Tracking
- S-band radar located at the Chilbolton Observatory
- EISCAT scatter radar capable of 3D monitoring of the atmosphere and ionosphere
- Ku-band imaging radar
SSA SST optical surveillance and tracking assets include:[14]
- Surveillance
- OLS telescope at the Observatorio Astronómico de Mallorca
- Starbrook and Starbrook north located at RAF Troodos
- Fabra-ROA telescope (TFRM) at Serra del Montsec
- ZimSMART robotic telescope
- OLS telescope at the
- Tracking
- Satellite laser ranging station Graz at Lustbühel Observatory
- Matera Laser Ranging Observatory (MLRO) in Italy
- OGS Telescope at the Teide Observatory
- TAROT and TAROT-South robotic telescope at the La Silla Observatory
- ZIMLAT telescope at the Zimmerwald Observatory
- ESA Flyeye Telescope at Sicily, Italy [15]
As part of the SSA Programme new, dedicated surveillance radar supported by optical sensors systems will be developed. The segment is coordinated by the Space Surveillance Test & Validation (SSTC) Centre located at the ESAC in Spain.[12]
Close approaches of Near-Earth objects and near earth asteroids are reported by ESA through the space situational awareness center. [16]
See also
- Kessler syndrome
- Space surveillance
- United States Space Surveillance Network
References
- ^ "Space Safety - Plans for the future". ESA.
- ^ "About SSA". ESA. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
- ^ ESA (9 Oct 2018). "Plans for the future". ESA.
- ^ a b "Space Safety main page". Space Safety. ESA. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ^ "Space weather and its hazards". ESA. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ^ "Planetary Defence". ESA. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ^ "About asteroids and Planetary Defence". ESA. Retrieved 2023-01-20.
- ^ "Space sustainability rating to shine a light on debris problem". ESA. 2021-06-17.
- ^ "Clean Space - The Challenge". ESA.
- ^ "SWE Segment". ESA. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
- ^ "NEO Segment". ESA. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
- ^ a b "SST Segment". ESA. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
- ^ "Europe's Radar Space Surveillance and Tracking Sensors". ESA. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
- ^ "Europe's Optical Space Surveillance and Tracking Sensors". ESA. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
- ^ "FLYEYE TELESCOPE". ESA. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
- ^ "Upcoming close approaches to earth". ESA. Retrieved 6 September 2019.