Tim Flohrer, ESA Space Debris Office; Klaus Merz; Holger Krag, ESA; Jan Siminski, ESA Space Debris; Holger Krag, ESA Space Safety Programme
Keywords: Automation of Collision Avoidance, STM, SSA, Space Traffic Management, Space Safety
Abstract:
ESA’s (European Space Agency) Member States have put forward a Space Safety Programme at the Space19+ Council meeting at Ministerial level in 2019. The Programme groups all activities on risk management by grouping into the three segments: Space weather; Planetary defence; and Debris and Clean Space.
In the segment addressing Space Debris and Clean Space ESA aims at developing the technologies that make Europe capable of monitoring and safely managing its space-related traffic; equipped with (automated) systems free from causing damage. A cornerstone component for this objective is included into the Programme: “Collision Risk Estimation and Automated Mitigation (CREAM)”.
CREAM encompasses the
development of techniques for automated manoeuvre decisions;
concept studies and protoflight development for the use of Signal-in-Space commanding;
development of techniques and protocols supporting manoeuvre coordination between operators and services providing space debris monitoring;
and aims at testing these techniques with a selected technology demo mission.
We report on the current status of the Programme, and focus on the area of collision avoidance (CREAM). In particular we report on the preparatory activities for CREAM performed during 2019 and present the ongoing and next activities.
Date of Conference: September 15-18, 2020
Track: SSA/SDA