Tuesday, July 6, 2010

ESA SSA Programme: Looking out for Space Hazards

Control room at ESA's Optical Ground Station

Under the SSA Programme, Europe preparing is the development of a capability to watch for objects and natural phenomena that can be hazardous to satellites in orbit or facilities - such as power grids - on the ground.

To achieve this, the SSA Programme is focusing on three main areas:

* SST: Space Surveillance and Tracking of objects in Earth orbit
Watching and warning for active and inactive satellites, discarded launch stages and fragmentation debris that orbit Earth.

* SWE: Space Weather
Monitoring conditions at the Sun, in the solar wind, and in Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere that can affect spaceborne and ground-based infrastructure or endanger human life or health.

* NEOs: Near-Earth Objects
Detecting natural objects that can potentially impact Earth and cause damage.

All participating Member States contribute to the Programme's core element (which includes the SSA architecture development, governance, data policy, security and the Space Surveillance and Tracking Segment), while the space weather element including NEO activities, the radar element (prototype system development) and the pilot data centres element are optional.

Finland has also opted to join in the discretionary space weather element.

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