Stargaze, a space situational awareness, or SSA, system the company announced in January<\/a>. Stargaze uses images from star trackers on Starlink spacecraft to detect and track objects in orbit, calculate orbits and use that information to detect potential conjunctions, or close approaches, with other spacecraft.<\/p>\nStargaze currently tracks about 16,500 objects in low Earth orbit, said Mike Hoot, a software engineer at SpaceX, during the presentation. That is about 48% of the public catalog maintained by the U.S. Space Force on its Space-Track.org system. Stargaze, he said, can detect objects as small as a meter across, meaning it cannot track many cubesat-class satellites or small debris.<\/p>\n
For the objects Stargaze can detect, he said the system can see them up to 10 times an hour because of the large number of sensors. \u201cThis is useful for tracking really big stuff and, especially, maneuverable satellites,\u201d he noted, with updated orbits for objects calculated within five minutes of a new Stargaze observation.<\/p>\n
\u201cStargaze is not a standalone replacement for radar systems today\u201d used for tracking objects in low Earth orbit, he said. \u201cThere are things radar systems can see that Stargaze cannot. But we think of it as a very useful complementary system.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SpaceX space-safety.com platform calculates potential conjunctions using Stargaze and other data, including ephemerides submitted by satellite operators that provide their own determinations of the orbits of their satellites, along with planned maneuvers.<\/p>\n
A key aspect of SpaceX\u2019s service is its ability to do rapid conjunction screening. Hoot said that while the Space-Track service checks for conjunctions three times a day, space-safety.com screens more than 500,000 ephemeris files daily, including those submitted by satellite operators and those calculated by Stargaze.<\/p>\n
He said that notices of potential conjunctions, called conjunction data messages, or CDMs, are generated within a minute of an ephemeris submission.<\/p>\n
The platform is currently available only to satellite operators who are willing to share ephemerides. Hoot said more than 30 satellite operators provided data on more than 700 of their objects in the last week.<\/p>\n
The system is also free to participating operators. \u201cWe do satellite internet. We\u2019re not trying to make money off SSA,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s motivations, though, are not entirely altruistic. The company is by far the largest satellite operator in the world, with more than 11,000 Starlink satellites in orbit. \u201cStarlink is highly invested in trying to make low Earth orbit safe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Much of the presentation offered lessons learned for safe operations in low Earth orbit. That included sharing accurate ephemerides and planned maneuver data, and the need to compensate for volatility from space weather by publishing ephemerides more frequently during solar storms that can increase atmospheric drag on satellites.<\/p>\n
Another is dealing with what the company calls the \u201claunch COLA gap,\u201d a reference to collision-avoidance screenings done before launch that cover the first several hours after the launch of satellites. Because it can take days for SSA systems to start tracking newly launched satellites, that creates a gap where those new satellites are, in effect, invisible to other operators.<\/p>\n
Hoot said that SpaceX\u2019s recommendations include publishing ephemerides as soon as possible after launch as well as avoiding launching directly into densely populated orbits, especially for new operators. \u201cIf you\u2019re learning to drive, you wouldn\u2019t want to take your first driving lesson on the freeway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 SpaceX is encouraging satellite operators to use a new space safety platform the company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[18,19,17,133,3976,3977,451,34935,2731,169612],"class_list":["post-655710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-small-satellite-conference","tag-sn","tag-space","tag-space-situational-awareness","tag-spacex","tag-stargaze"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117156411388770853","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}