Tim Flohrer, ESA Space Debris Office and Space Situational Awareness Programme; Beatriz Jilete, GMV@ESA/ESAC, SSA Programme Office, Villanueva de la Canada; Emiliano Cordelli, Astronomisches Institut Universität Bern; Thomas Schildknecht, Astronomisches Institut Universität Bern
Keywords: SSA, Optical Observations, Sensor calibration, Sensor networking
Abstract:
The European Space Agency (ESA) continues its Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme with three segments Space Weather (SWE), Near Earth Objects (NEO) and Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST). A total of 19 member states of ESA participate in the SSA programme, of which 11 subscribed to the SST segment. SST work focusses on the development of the technologies for detection, cataloguing and follow-up of space objects, and of the derived applications and services for conjunction event prediction, re-entry predictions, and fragmentation event detection During period 3 of the programme (2017 to 2020), the SST segment aims at the successful establishment of expert centres for optical and laser ranging observations. This objective addresses the need for networking and integration of heterogeneous sensors in a coherent SST segment. In consequence, the expert centre serves as the focal point for the interfacing with segment-external sensors and assets. This centre is designed to interface with system-external data sources to not only request and manage observations but also provide feedback on the received data. We report on the development and deployment of the Expert Centre. Special focus will be on the first deployment completed in Summer 2017. We present the demonstrated capabilities for coordination and monitoring of sensors and data providers, and report on the achievements for providing feedback to sensor operators, such as in particular for sensor qualification and calibration. We conclude with an outlook on the further work and overall strategy.
Date of Conference: September 11-14, 2018
Track: Space Situational Awareness