Context:
EUSST (European Union Space Surveillance & Tracking) is a subcomponent of SSA (Situational Space Awareness) programme born from the need of management of the growing complexity of the orbital environment, and it is in charge of guaranteeing the safety and security of space environment either for space operations or the safeguard of space assets. This intricated orbital environment can result on a risk of collision between spacecraft and space debris. At the same time, objects may re-enter and cause damage on the ground. Therefore, the characterization of space surroundings through surveillance and tracking are essential allowing EUSST to have a broader insight of these circumstances. Currently, EUSST is providing services of Collision Avoidance (CA), Re-Entry Analysis (RE) and Fragmentation Analysis (FG).
The evolution of current system aims to cope with space surveillance challenges, so design and optimization of the architecture are essential for overcoming ongoing constraints. In order to improve service provision capabilities, this grant covers the inclusion of digital twin as a prime role to play since enables precise simulations which allows events, such as detection of malfunctions, optimization of several tasks, or repetition of past events regarding to aforementioned services. In short, the impact of the project will be:
• Increasing the EUSST scalability
• Improvement of service provision capabilities
• Increasing trustworthiness of EUSST regarding to its systems
The addition of such technology will contribute the safeguard of space assets. Moreover, EUSST will be a cornerstone for the EU STM (European Union Space Traffic Management) as it will ensure the contribution of EU for future space activities.
To reach this, several activities have been carried out to maximize the impact and contribution of EU SST towards ensuring a sustainable and guaranteed access to and use of space as well as global burden-sharing in the domain of Space Situational Awareness, accomplishing the safety and security of European economies, societies and citizens.
Overall objectives:
In order to ensure the safety of space environment and sustain Europe’s pioneering role in future missions, new activities are performed. This is the SST & STM system architecture and evolutions project, that has been implemented in the form of a Specific Grant Agreement (SGA) addressing the objectives identified in the Space Regulation and the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2021-2022 :
• Foster European cooperation in the SST domain and improve the EUSST performance towards larger autonomy.
• Highlight and propose solutions to fill the gaps in the current EUSST architecture.
• Pave the way on which the EUSST system has to evolve towards a higher level of performance, quality of service and autonomy.
• Demonstrate the complementarity, coherence and added-value of each element of EUSST system towards a more autonomous, interoperable SST system.
• Explore and look for higher levels of cooperation with other SST systems to develop long-term cooperation.
• Propose adaptation to the new changes, and solutions for their possible integration into the existing standards, practices and technological means.
