Space safety and security for military commanders, intelligence agencies and civil and commercial satellite operators hinges on one central assumption: that the space situational awareness (SSA) data that underpins their critical decision-making processes is “fit for purpose” — sufficiently accurate, timely and comprehensive enough to be trusted.
That assumption deserves renewed scrutiny in light of new research findings underscoring the need for governments and industry worldwide to reassess the risk profile of today’s space architecture.
Every day, spacecraft operators must decide whether to maneuver valuable satellites based on collision warnings. Decision-makers must trade off an abundance of caution to avoid collisions with the expenditure of maneuvering fuel, potential service interruptions, extensive analysis and downstream planning challenges associated with mitigating collision risk. Get it wrong, and they risk losing a critical national security or commercial asset, along with outages in critical infrastructure for vital products and services.
Those decisions are only as good as the confidence operators have in the underlying orbital information. Recent research from our team at COMSPOC examining today’s typical conjunction assessment practices reveals a surprising and disconcerting finding: typical operators may only be retiring 7 percent of actual collision risk, leaving 93 percent still in play.
