Space Situational Awareness: Space Risk

Today, satellites and space-based systems for navigation, communication, Earth observation and many other applications are indispensable for services critical to Europe’s economies, and this dependency is only growing. Any shutdown or loss of these would seriously affect an enormous range of commercial and civil activities, including travel, transport, telecommunication, banking, broadcasting and weather forecasting, to name just a few. ESA's Space Situational Awareness Programme aims to develop a European SSA system able to provide timely and reliable data, information and services regarding the space environment and related risks and to foster the sustainable exploitation of space. As an infrastructure-centric programme, SSA also supports wider European policy objectives that include developing new applications, boosting job growth and securing new markets. The Programme is actively developing three functional ‘segments’ – networks of hardware, software and control systems linked to sensors and data sources – supporting future services in Space Weather (SWE), Near-Earth Objects (NEO) and Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST).