Igone Urdampilleta, CDTI; Emmanuel Delande, CNES; Vincent Morand, CNES; Johannes Gelhaus, German Aerospace Center (DLR); Elena Vellutini, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI); Violeta Poenaru, Romanian Space Agency (ROSA); José Freitas, Direção Geral de Recursos da Defesa Nacional MDN; Tomasz Zubowicz, Polish Space Agency (POLSA); Daniel Garcia-Yarnoz, EU SatCen
Keywords: EU SST, architecture, simulation, coverage, cataloguing, service provision, SST, sensors
Abstract:
The Decision of the European Parliament and the Council Establishing a Space Surveillance and Tracking Support Framework was adopted on April 16, 2014. It established the European Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) Support Framework at European level, which evolved into a fully-fledged component of the European Union Space Programme adopted on 28 April 2021. EU SST contributes to the global burden sharing of ensuring the sustainable and guaranteed access to and use of space for all. Its primary objective is the provision of space-safety services, namely, to protect spacecraft from the risk of collision, to monitor uncontrolled re-entries, and to survey the in-orbit fragmentation of space objects. For that purpose, the design and the performance analysis of a global system architecture proving best value for money for the medium and long term has been established as one of the main activities of EU SST.
This paper presents the evolution of the system approach adopted for the simulation-based performance evaluation of the current and future EU SST system using observation and cataloguing capabilities (Hermoso, J. M. et al., AMOS 2021), including an analysis of the service provision capabilities. Individual sensors, both existing and under development, are first modelled according to their performance and corresponding surveillance strategies. Different levels of performance can be considered for each sensor depending on potential future upgrades. Then, coverage and cataloguing simulations are performed, and each sensors added value is assessed. Finally, sensor contribution to the services is evaluated to determine the overall EU SST network performance.
This work describes the simulation hypotheses and techniques adopted for the three main services currently provided by EU SST: collision avoidance (CA), re-entry analysis (RE), and fragmentation (FG) analysis. The simulation cases were developed and tested by two independent simulation benches: BAS3E, belonging to the CNES (France) and AS4/SASSIM, under supervision of CDTI (Spain). In order to estimate the service provision performance of space surveillance and tracking systems, specific methodology for each one of the services together with a set of metrics have been developed. In the case of the CA, one of the main challenges has consisted of setting up a population set showing statistically representative conjunctions to be observed during the screening period prior to TCA (Time to Closest Approach). The RE simulations focus on the coverage performance of the sensors, during the last days of the re-entering object’s orbital lifetime. To this end, the major difficulty found has been how to model the tracking sensors (mount velocity, capacity to acquire the image, etc.), which can contribute to improve the observations, and therefore, the RE analyses during the last days before the re-entry. The FG service simulations show the capability to observe the clouds of fragments after the fragmentation event. The cataloguing performance results of the FG service are also provided with respect to the miscorrelation percentage, especially important during the initial days. In conclusion, the service provision simulations enhance the assessment methodology and tools used bv EU SST for system performance evaluation, moving one step further towards an end-to-end simulation environment for SST activities, adding the service provision layer simulation results to the previously existing ones, which dealt with coverage and cataloguing.
Date of Conference: September 27-20, 2022
Track: SSA/SDA