ISRO launches world’s first facility to track space debris, safeguard assets

BENGALURU: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Monday inaugurated the world’s first-ever facility dedicated to monitoring space debris and safeguarding assets in space, which is expected to significantly help combat the growing threat to orbiting satellites and space stations.

The ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations & Management (IS4OM) was inaugurated in Bengaluru on Monday, with Minister of State for the Department of Space Jitendra Singh saying that the facility would better help with space traffic monitoring.“Just like the amount of traffic on the roads in Bengaluru, you realise how many satellites there are, how much debris there is that could lead to collisions. We need a way to detect, forestall, remove and capture them, that is the next point of concern,” he said.

IS4OM is ISRO’s holistic approach to ensure safety of space assets and sustain the utilization of outer space for national development.In response to ever-growing space object population and the risk of collisions in space, it undertakes observation and monitoring of space objects and space environment, processing the observations for orbit determination, object characterization and cataloguing, analysis of space environment evolution, risk assessment and mitigation, and data exchange and collaboration.]

The system will safeguard all Indian space assets by mitigating the collision threats from space objects through specific orbit manoeuvres and comply with international guidelines on post-mission disposal and satellite’s end-of-life operations.

Facility will be able to remove debris: ISRO chief

IS4OM will currently work as a facility using data from various satellites to help detect space objects and use this as a way to avoid collisions.ISRO Chairman S Somanath said the facility will eventually work towards systems and crafts that will be able to remove or destroy space debris to prevent a rising concern about Kessler Syndrome, which states that a collision in space due to pollution could increase the number of space debris, increasing the number of potential collisions due to the multiplying space debris.

“The accuracy with which we currently predict where debris will fall can be as inaccurate as 300km as seen by recent incident of Chinese space debris in Maharashtra where it was predicted to fall in the sea. This facility will work towards improving systems that allow us to predict where debris will fall with better accuracy,” said Somanath. “This is only the first step in our programme. We need to have our own data, our own observations of all space objects,” he said.