Detecting space hazards
HOW THE ESA’S SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS PROGRAMME IS TACKLING DANGERS IN SPACE
The European Space Agency is setting its sights on protecting Earth and astronauts from potential perils
Threats from outer space: it sounds like science fiction, but at some level Earth has always been vulnerable to them. Think of the giant asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Fortunately such occurrences are extremely rare, but there are other natural phenomena – in the form of solar storms – that can strike from space much more frequently.
These have little effect on living things, but they can play havoc with the electronic systems we increasingly depend on, with satellite-based technology in particular at risk of being affected. To make matters worse, the proliferation of the latter has created a new space hazard of its own in the form of orbiting debris with the potential to destroy other satellites.
Numerous organisations around the world have been set up to address these threats, but it’s usually done in a piecemeal fashion. In America, for example, the tracking of space debris is carried out by the US Space Force, the monitoring of ‘space weather’ is coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the search for potentially hazardous asteroids is the job of NASA’S grandly named Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The European Space Agency (ESA), on the other hand, has adopted a unified approach to all these activities under the umbrella of its Space Situational Awareness programme. Set up in 2009, this is divided into three segments covering space weather, near-earth objects and space surveillance and tracking.
The emphasis in all three areas is on the detection and tracking of potential threats. As long as these are known in advance, appropriate action can be taken to minimise danger. The projected impact site of an asteroid can be evacuated, for example, or a satellite on a collision course with a piece of space debris can be moved to a different orbit.