(via spaceviewnetwork)
Low-earth orbit, near-earth orbit and every place in between is action-packed with space garbage. According to NASA there’s roughly 500,000 pieces of potentially hazardous space debris that can damage satellites and other equipment and include rocket pieces (various stages of rocket boosters), fragments of satellites that were targets for military testing, nuts and bolts and even paint-chips (seriously!). All of this garbage threatens the more than 1,200 satellites currently traversing around the earth; most being ‘peacekeeping’ (spying) and ‘combat-oriented’ birds that the US government has come to rely on (more so over the last decade). In an effort to identify and track these celestial orbiting hazards, DARPA is to enlist the help of amateur astronomers with a new program called ‘SpaceView’. The idea of the program is to provide additional data to the US Air Force’s SSN (Space Surveillance Network) which identifies tracks and catalogues objects that have the potential of colliding with the costly orbiting platforms. As of today that consists of roughly only 30,000 pieces of identified/cataloged trash the size of a softball or around 10cm. Current methods of finding the trash consists of radar (ineffective), observation satellites (space is pretty big so using a MSX-based observation platform to find junk the size of a car is pretty much difficult to say the least), and sensor satellites (SBSS platforms are costly, few in number and can only ‘see’ small ‘swaths’ of space at any given point).
DARPA’s SSA (Space Situational Awareness) project will work by purchasing time from ‘in-use’ remote-access telescopes from various agencies. If none are available at certain times, DARPA will then try to supply its own hardware, as well as the software to run it, designated for back-up use. The time purchased then goes to selected astronomers or groups that have signed up for the SpaceView program. When any telescope that has been rented by DARPA isn’t being used in the proposed time slot it will then be transferred over to other entities for use in astronomy or astrophotography (so it’s a win-win no matter how you look at it). The idea of using a network of amateur star-gazers is based around cost as deploying a telescope surveillance net for trash is an extremely expensive undertaking if you factor in the hardware needed, hiring a staff of astronomers and not to mention maintenance. Not only will the program cater to amateurs, but will also provide diverse data from a myriad of different geo-location points around the globe which is invaluable (at least for those who own the satellites). Those interested in participating in DARPA’s SpaceView program can head over to the SpaceView website, but be forewarned those who already have access to telescopes and prominent geo-locations (among other criteria) will be selected first until the program team evaluates the proficiency of ‘off-the-shelf’ hardware, which is likely to come they just need a way of adapting them to the program.
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