Comparison of different configurations of a future European Space Surveillance System
Abstract
In the year 1957 the first artificial object made by mankind was placed into an Earth orbit. This was the beginning of space flight and also of space surveillance. During the 53 years up to now the leading nations of space flight -the United States of America and Russia (former Soviet Union) -established their own surveillance networks to be aware of the objects in space. However, the access to the resulting data was or still is restricted so that Europe intends to build up its own surveillance network in the next couple of years. Different sensor systems shall be part of the European Space Surveillance System (ESSS). Radar systems will be used for the detection of objects in low earth orbits (LEO) while traditional optical systems will be used to cover the population in the upper medium earth orbit (MEO) and the geostationary earth orbit (GEO). Modern optical satellite surveillance systems shall also be able to detect objects in the upper LEO region up to GEO. To evaluate the best setup for a future ESSS possible sensor systems have to be combined in different configurations and their performance has to be analysed. For this purpose the PROOF-2009 software will be utilized. As a base population the MASTER-2009 population for the epoch May 1st , 2040 will be used. This population includes nearly one million objects larger than one centimeter in all orbital regions from LEO to GEO and is used in upcoming studies as reference population. The comparison will be split into three parts. In the first part different radar setups will be compared while the second part deals with the comparison of different setups for optical systems to cover the population of high altitudes. The configurations for optical systems will consist of ground based or space based telescopes. Results of an analysis of the modern optical satellite surveillance systems will be shown in the third part and compared with the results of part one and two. Finally an example for an ESSS configuration allowing regular object detection will be outlined.
- Publication:
-
38th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010cosp...38.4262G