ESA Wants Own System to Protect Satellites From Space Junk
February 17, 2009
After a US satellite accidentally hit an out-of-commission Russian satellite, scattering a trail of debris in space last week, the European Space Agency said Monday, Feb. 16, it wanted its own system to protect satellites.
Gaele Winters, who heads ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) at Darmstadt, said the debris would be a danger to ESA's own satellites in the same orbit. He said ESA need live data so its spacecraft could steer clear of the junk.
Jean-Francois Kaufeler, head of the space junk monitoring department at ESOC, said, "Much more monitoring needs to be done." Experts are to meet March 30 to April 2 in Darmstadt to swap ideas on how.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) tracks about 13,000 objects in orbit, but ESA estimates hundreds of thousands of distinct items are in orbit. A fragment 1 centimeter across could knock out a satellite if it hit it at speed.
Steering clear of space junk is possible, but requires precise tracking data in advance, the experts said.