A nano satellite constellation for detection of objects in earth orbit

On February 10, the Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 communications satellites collided over northern Siberia. Earlier in 2007 the Chinese ASAT test was carried out against the Chinese FENGYUN 1C polar-orbiting weather satellite on 2007 January 11. Clouds with a large number of additional space debris have been generated by these two incidents. This tendency has been recognized by Europe in recent years and concerns were raised regarding Europe´s own capability to monitor these assets appropriately. To give a recent example, EUMETSAT was informed by U.S. Air Force authorities that Europe´s METOP meteorological satellite in low Earth orbit might be in the path of a piece of orbital debris. As a reaction to this situation, ESA has launched its own space situational awareness program recently at the ministerial meeting in November 2008. To support the European space situational awareness program a nano satellite constellation consisting of two satellites has been studied in the frame of a team design project. The very first study results shows that such a system can be a valuable contribution to the SSA program using a optical sensor system in orbit at a very low cost compared to larger satellites. The main advantage of such a system is independence from weather conditions and a large field of view, which promises a larger number of detections in shorter time compared to large aperture sized telescopes.