by As the space around Earth becomes more cluttered with human junk, scientists are stepping up their efforts to protect satellites in real time.
The latest in that effort are new algorithms being developed by the University of Central Florida (UCF) to automatically monitor spacecraft and protect them from crashing into satellites and asteroids in cislunar space — the field between Earth and the moonwhich is under the gravitational influence of the two heavenly bodies.
Because cislunar space is so vast, tracking and predicting the orbits of satellites, the phases of spent rockets and asteroids is a challenging task, scientists say.
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The existing infrastructure “is not equipped to provide the necessary coverage in cislunar space,” said Tarek Elgohary, associate professor of aerospace engineering, in a. UCF statement. “Rapid and accurate solutions are needed to quantify uncertainties to improve and provide predictions [space domain awareness] information in the absence of continuous coverage.”
The new algorithms are being designed to automatically track objects and predict collisions low earth orbit (LEO), which is expected to become more crowded in the next decade. Elgohary said the same tools, whose development is largely being funded by the Virginia-based Air Force Office of Scientific Research, could also be used to monitor ships at sea, predict their paths and “spot suspicious behavior in real time.”
“Space and maritime domains have many similarities in terms of the lack of continuous coverage of spacecraft or vessels, the large size of the search domain and the need for the ability to predict maneuvers,” Elgohary said in the statement. “Maritime domain awareness may require shorter time scales; however, with the expansion of space missions, space domain awareness operations have been reduced from weeks and days to hours and minutes.”
24-7 hour rush in space
Last year, the number of satellites orbiting our planet increased by almost 3,000 – 15% more than in 2022, according to report by Slingshot Aerospace published in April. Among more than 12,500 total satellites in orbit, 3,000 are inactive and are “taking up valuable space,” said Melissa Quinn, the general manager at Slingshot, in orbit. news release.
Although a large majority of those are inactive satellites retired to “graveyard orbits” at the end of their lives, the average distance between satellites in orbit decreased last year due to the increase in satellite launches, and the trend is expected to continue as new spacecraft continue to rise, the report said.
“The industry has been saying that space is getting more crowded for years, but now the reality is setting in and the pressure is on to address the increased risk in orbit,” said Quinn. “With LEO becoming more crowded than ever, satellites that provide valuable services including the internet, weather forecasting and land use tracking are at great risk.”
“This calls for an urgent need to work together to protect everyday life World,” she said.
Experts have been sounding the alarm bells for years about the harmful effects of the grow space junk population. In October of last year, for example, researchers who analyzed filings with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency responsible for granting spaces in orbit for satellite use, received that more than 1 million satellites are planned to be sent to LEO.
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“If even a fraction of those million satellites are launched, national and international rules will be needed to address the associated sustainability challenges, such as collision risks, light pollution and re-entry risks,” Andrew Falle, a researcher at the University of British Columbia’s Outer Space Institute and lead author of the new study, said Space.com at the time.
And this month, a NASA report completed that the timeline for decommissioning obsolete spacecraft to less than five years is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce waste in Earth orbit. The report was based on a simulation of how space debris develops over 30 years and the financial costs incurred by satellite operators due to maneuvers to avoid mission-ending collisions with satellites or other debris. It also found that avoiding just-in-time collisions that eject debris from the collision path and removing a centimeter of debris from orbit “could return benefits that are 300 and 100 times their cost, respectively.”
Questions remain regarding the impact of satellite re-entries on The Earth’s Atmosphere. Last October, for example, a group of researchers reported that they found vaporized metals left over from satellite re-entries in the stratosphere, which contains our planet’s fragile ozone layer.
