Towards a Future European Space Surveillance System

1
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• Space is characterized by the fact that the
  competences are scarcely distributed among
  nations
• As long as this will be the case, collective
  security hardly possible

2
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• Collective space situation awareness one mean to
  share resources
• The main issue think about how to start the
  process realistically that will prove to be
  constructive politically

3
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• Agreement on the fact that, on a 30-40 years
  timescale, main trends must be taken into
  account
• The space landscape will be deeply transformed
• More and more traffic with new orbital management
  techniques constellations, formation flying, etc)
• More and more diverse players and stakeholders
• Space applications more and more devoted to
  societal security issues
• Main trends make the space surveillance
  capability become a logical prerequisite for
  future investments in space

4
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• In Europe, the space surveillance collective
  capability naturally fits into the global space
  for security picture
• It makes sense in the context of the European
  process
• Idea of a political maturity Europe must assume
  its political identity through collective
  security projects
• Based on the traditional engine of the European
  construction, i.e. RD (CERN, Euratom tradition)
• Space as a provider of soft power in a context
  where a common ESDP remains difficult

5
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• European experience of multilateral security
  thinking can prove inspirational for this
  collective endeavour
• Europe is used to think in cooperative terms
• Allows to collate national competences at the
  regional level via several procedures
• Multinational experience already at hand
• ESA has a specific experience in pooling
  resources coming from different national
  backgrounds

6
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• Multinational experience and competence
• Graves/Monge Graves fully operational since
  2005
• One of the main effort better cataloguing
  capabilities
• FGAN/TIRA
• British radar capabilities
• Formed the base for recent ESA studies conducted
  about the design of a European Space Surveillance
  System

7
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• From space surveillance to space situation
  awareness
• Several functions need to be performed to be
  coherent with the future challenges
• Knowing the orbital parameters
• Predict the passage, the possible fall on the
  Earth
• Recognize any new objects in orbit
• Recognize manoeuvers
• Predict collision courses
• Identify satellites

Correspond to the future  Space landscape 
Challenges that affect Security
8
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• A first system envisioned for 2010 with some
  upgrade made in 2015 would reach 1700 km range
  and bring some 98 LEO coverage while the GEO
  strategy, based on the use of 3/4 sites
  distributed globally, would offer a 95 Geo
  coverage at the 2015 horizon.
• Donath (T.), Brousse (P.), Laycock (J.), Michal
  (T.), Ameline (P.), Leushacke (L.), Proposal for
  a European Space Surveillance System, presented
  in ESTEC, 2005

9
Towards a Future European Space Surveillance
System

• main challenge
• to maintain a catalogue of orbital objects
  providing a genuine analytical capability
• Any survey and cataloguing strategy requires
  repeated and updated observation of space objects
  to secure correct orbital data, to better
  identify un-catalogued objects and to task
  observation for catalogue maintenance and
  manoeuvre identifications
• European opportunity
• Cooperative technical solutions or strategies
  would pay off very quickly here by offering
  participating states improved data collection,
  which in turn can provide better space management
  capabilities or even better security assessments.
  
• Given the increased space activity expected for
  the years to come, interest of having a
  cooperative system on the regional scale that can
  contribute to SSA on a world scale once
  monitoring assets and cataloguing capabilities
  are fully operational.