During his closing speech at the EU Space Conference on Wednesday 22 January, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, stressed his desire to make progress on ‘space situational awareness’ (SSA) at European level so that, in the long term, a European space traffic management system can be established and have an influence in negotiations at global level.
“Space situational awareness to avoid collisions and debris on key satellites – this is something we have to handle, but it will be difficult to handle alone”, said Mr Breton, who sees a need for global cooperation on space traffic management (STM). However, in order to cooperate, one “must have something to offer”, he analysed, considering that it was necessary to act “very quickly” at European level, stressing that it is “extremely important” to the subject.
The Commissioner pointed out that the SSA was thus a precursor project for a European space traffic management system, which could “perhaps” one day become part of a global system.
A major challenge for the security of European space programmes
Space surveillance, what is it? The first task is to draw up a catalogue of man-made objects orbiting the earth using a series of sensors on the ground, but also to monitor near-Earth objects and space weather, according to the missions defined by the European Union. Eventually, this monitoring would evolve towards the introduction of a space traffic management framework, although the concept remains unclear at present.
The situation in low orbit is increasingly worrying. Already today, said Rolf Densing, ESA Director of Operations, the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) receives an average of 100 collision alerts per day with debris or another satellite, whether operational or not – about 3,000 non-operational satellites orbit the earth at present, and fewer than 2,000 are operational.
Every 2 weeks, a manoeuvre is carried out to avoid a collision, the scientist continued. The problem is that each manoeuvre is performed using the fuel on board the satellites. “But unlike a car, you can’t fill up on gas in space”, Mr Densing said ironically. As a result, each manoeuvre to avoid a collision shortens the satellite’s life expectancy by a little.
The situation is likely to worsen, he continued, with players such as SpaceX, which plans to send 12,000 satellites by 2020. The collision management, which is currently carried out “manually” so to speak, will then be completely outdated. Hence the need to develop a map of debris and satellites and then to implement automatic avoidance systems based on data and artificial intelligence systems.
Europe lagging behind
The United States has taken the lead in this area, adopting a directive on ‘Space Traffic Management’ in the summer of 2018. A global normative race is beginning, and the European Union is falling behind.
There is indeed the SST consortium, bringing together eight states (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Poland, Portugal and Romania), and the pilot project, launched at the initiative of MEP Marian Marinescu (EPP, Romania), on Space Traffic Management, with a budget of €1 million. There is also the European Space Agency (ESA) in Seville, which obtained almost €500 million for its Space & Safety programme.
However, mapping space remains a highly sensitive project for the Member States, as it would make it possible to know all the active satellites, both civilian and military, we were told, which could pose security and defence problems.
Some already envisage that the European GNSS Agency (GSA), which will soon become the EU Space Programme Agency with the adoption of the Space Programme Regulation, could take over STM operations under Article 30 of that Regulation (see EUROPE 12035/3). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)