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ESA Program Will Monitor Space Debris

Posted on: Monday, 16 February 2009, 14:40 CST

The European Space Agency (ESA) has started a new program to track space debris and establish standards to avoid future collisions, an official said on Monday.

Dubbed Space Situational Awareness, the $64 million program was launched in January, and seeks to provide scientists on the ground with additional information about the estimated 13,000 satellites and other man made structures now orbiting the Earth.

Two satellites collided 500 miles over Siberia on February 10, generating space debris that could orbit the Earth and threaten other satellites 10,000 years.  The collision involved a dilapidated Russian military communications spacecraft and an operational satellite owned by U.S.-based Iridium.

"What the last accident showed us is that we need to do much more. We need to be receiving much more precise data in order to prevent further collisions," a Reuters report quoted ESA space debris expert Jean-Francois Kaufeler as saying.

A critical component of the ESA’s program is to augment the amount of information shared among the world’s various space agencies, such as NASA and Russia's Roscosmos, Kaufeler said.

Another feature that must be considered is setting international standards on how debris is described, monitored and, if required, moved to prevent collisions, Kaufeler added.

U.S. and Russian officials disputed who was ultimately to blame for the collision, which sent clouds of debris into space that threatened other unmanned crafts orbiting nearby.

Although it is unclear how many pieces of space debris the collision generated, Maj. Gen. Alexander Yakushin, chief of staff for the Russian military's Space Forces, said the crash scattered space junk in orbits 300 to 800 miles above Earth.

Space debris experts will convene later this week in Vienna at a U.N. seminar to establish improved methods to prevent such collisions in the future, and at the 5th European Conference on Space Debris at ESA in March.

"We need more precision in space," Kaufeler said.

"The current measurements (of space debris) are not precise enough."

Kaufeler said that neither NASA or the ESA were able to predict the latest collision, although his scientists have been warning for 20 years that such an accident was possible.

"The problem of space debris is unique," he said.

"We need to work together, we need to unify our forces if we are going to solve it."

Later this year, the Europeans plan to launch two new telescopes that will help astronomers study the furthest reaches of space. The Planck telescope will map background radiation that fills space, while the Herschel telescope will provide a view of far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths.

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On the Net:

• ESA
• Video: Spread of space debris within a few hours after fragmentation

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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