A space situational awareness firm Digantara has signed an agreement with Govt. of Uttarakhand to establish India’s first commercial space situational observatory in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand.
Salient features
- The observatory will track objects as small as 10 cm in size orbiting the earth.
- The space situational awareness (SSA) observatory will assist in tracking any activity in space including that of space debris and military satellites hovering over the region.
- The observatory in Uttarakhand will fill the crucial gap in SSA observations in the region as there is a lack of such facilities between Australia and southern Africa.
- The observatory will help to monitor events occurring in deep space, especially in the geostationary, medium-Earth, and high-Earth orbits.
- The high-quality observations made will be complemented by observations of its partner ground-based sensor network.
- With this data, it would be able to reduce the potential for collisions between satellites and other spacecraft by making more accurate predictions of their location, speed, and trajectory.
- India has been monitoring space objects using multi-object tracking radars and the SSA observatory will be a huge boost in the sector.
- With the establishment of the observatory, Digantara will be able to supplement its space-based sensors in its mission to monitor satellites and debris in orbits ranging from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO).
What is Space Situational Awareness (SSA)?
Space Situational Awareness (SSA) refers to the knowledge of the space environment, including location and function of space objects and space weather phenomena. SSA is generally understood as covering three main areas:
- Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) of man-made objects.
- Space WEather (SWE) monitoring and forecast.
- Near-Earth Objects (NEO) monitoring (only natural space objects).
Project Netra
- Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched ‘Project NETRA’ (Network for space object Tracking and Analysis)’ – an early warning system in space to detect debris and other hazards to Indian satellites.
