ISRO Chief Inaugurates Space Situational Awareness Control Centre To Protect Space Assets

Bengaluru, December 16: To enhance space situational awareness, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Dr. K Sivan inaugurated the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Control Centre at Peenya, Bangalore.

 

 

The control center is envisaged to function as a hub of all SSA activities within India. SSA has become an integral and indispensable part of safe and sustainable space operations. Concurrent processing of data from the upcoming observational facilities for space objects’ orbit determination, correlation, and catalogue generation will take place at the facility.

 

During the inauguration, the Sivan reiterated the need for setting up a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to SSA activities on par with international agencies. He also added that the SSA Control Centre is an important milestone in the progress of ISRO.

 

"In view of ever-growing population of space objects and the recent trend towards mega-constellations, Space Situational Awareness (SSA) has become an integral and indispensable part of safe and sustainable space operations. For the last few decades, ISRO has been carrying out SSA activities, mainly focused on safeguarding India’s space assets," the ISRO said in a statement.

 

Recognising the need for dedicated efforts to tackle the emerging challenges of operating in an exceedingly crowded and contested space domain, the Directorate of Space Situational Awareness and Management (DSSAM) has been established at ISRO, it added.

 

Apart from Sivan other dignitaries present at the inauguration ceremony was Shri. P. Kunhikrishnan, Director, URSC, Shri. R. Umamaheswaran, Scientific Secretary, and Dr. A. K. Anilkumar, Director, DSSAM.

 

The control center is envisaged to function as a hub of all SSA activities within India. Concurrent processing of data from the upcoming observational facilities for space objects’ orbit determination, correlation, and catalogue generation will take place here. There will be provision to schedule and remotely operate the observational facilities from the control center.

 

Other core SSA activities will-comprise close approach analysis between ISRO’s satellite and launch vehicles, timely dissemination of advance alerts on upcoming critical conjunctions for collision avoidance of operational assets, prediction of atmospheric re-entry of derelict satellites and rocket bodies.

 

Besides, dedicated labs will also be set up in this control center for Space Debris mitigation and remediation, compliance verification of UN/IADC guidelines, and various R&D activities. The R&D activities will encompass space object fragmentation and break up modeling, space debris population, and micrometeoroid environment modeling, Space Weather studies, Near-Earth Objects, and planetary defence studies, etc.

 

ISRO said that, "The establishment of ISRO SSA Control Centre marks an important milestone towards enhancement and augmentation of ISRO’s SSA capabilities, paving the way for greater self-reliance under the ambit of “Atmanirbhar” Bharat."