Space Surveillance

Space surveillance is the task of systematically surveying and tracking all objects above a certain size and maintaining a catalogue with updated orbital and physical characteristics for those objects.

Space surveillance is gaining increased importance as operational safety of spacecrafts is dependent on it:

• Avoidance of collision with space debris and other active spacecrafts
• Establishing a catalogue for space debris and active spacecrafts
• Characterizing space debris population
• Establishing space debris models for risk assessment
• Determining the trajectory & risk of re-entering objects with large masses

At the moment, Europe has no capability for space surveillance and is strongly dependent on external information mainly from USA and Russia while some European radar and optical facilities exist for tracking of space objects.

Corona Space in Norway is the only dedicated space surveillance centre in Europe which was established to increase the European capability in this field.