Space Security Index

Space Security 2011
CHAPTER TWO
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Space Situational Awareness
is chapter assesses trends and developments related to the technical ability of dierent
spacefaring actors “to monitor and understand the changing environment in space.” 1 is
includes the ability to detect, track, identify, and catalog objects in outer space, such as space
debris and active or defunct satellites, as well as observe space weather and monitor spacecraft
and payloads for maneuvers and other events. 2 Also assessed in this chapter are the growing
international eorts made to improve the predictability of space operations through data
sharing.
A subset of Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is space surveillance — information about the
locations of objects in Earth orbit. ere is no international space surveillance mechanism,
but eorts to create one date from the 1980s. In 1989, France proposed the creation of an
international Earth-based space surveillance system consisting of radar and optical sensors
to allow the international community to track the trajectory of space objects. Such an
initiative could complement the U.S.-Russian agreement to establish the Joint Center for
the Exchange of Data from Early Warning Systems and Notication of Missile Launches. 3
In the absence of an international surveillance system, countries are establishing independent
capabilities, with a limited degree of information exchange.
Driven by Cold War security concerns, the U.S. and the USSR were pioneers in the
development of space surveillance capabilities. Today, a growing number of space actors
are investing in space surveillance to facilitate debris monitoring, satellite tracking, and
NEO detection, although this is also a key enabling technology for space systems negation,
since tracking and identifying targeted objects in orbit are prerequisites to most negation
techniques.
At present the U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN) is the primary provider of space
surveillance data. Although the U.S. maintains the most capable space surveillance system,
Russia continues to have relatively extensive capabilities in this area, and China and India
have signicant satellite tracking, telemetry, and control assets essential to their civil space
programs. e satellite intercepted by China on 11 January 2007 was tracked and targeted
using such indigenous surveillance technology.
Space-based surveillance, rst demonstrated by the U.S. with the Space Visible Sensor
experiment that was decommissioned in 2008, 4 is being pursued through the Space Based
Space Surveillance (SBSS) system, which has been described as “a constellation of optical
sensing satellites to track and identify space forces in deep space to enable defensive and
oensive counterspace operations.” 5 e $823.9-million program is designed to collect realtime
data and track satellites that are orbiting from LEO to a higher position, 6 using satellites
equipped with “an optical telescope that is highly responsive to quick tasking orders, allowing
it to shift from target to target quickly in space.” 7 SBSS will be able to track every satellite
in GEO at least once every 24 hours using its two-axis, gimbaled visible light sensors. 8 After
several delays, the rst SBSS satellite was placed in orbit on 25 September 2010.
Space Security Impact
Improved SSA capabilities can have a positive impact on the security of outer space
inasmuch as SSA can be used to predict and/or prevent harmful interference with the assets
of spacefaring states. In an increasingly congested domain, with new civil and commercial
actors gaining access every year (see Chapter 4), SSA constitutes a vital tool for the protection
of space assets. Additionally, increasing the amount of SSA data available to all states can