Space Situational Awareness - Protecting Assets in Space from Orbital Debris (a RMIT University perspective on the Space Environment Management CRC)

Services delivered from satellites in the near-Earth space environment are under threat from orbiting space debris from over 50 years of space operations. Computational modelling studies have shown that even under optimistic mitigation scenarios remediation is necessary to curb the growth. In fact, certain regions of the lowEarth orbit are already demonstrating a collisional cascading instability. In these regions, even if mitigation scenarios are assumed and no future launches occur, there is still a growth experienced in the number of debris objects. This paper introduces the newly established multi-million-dollar Space Environment Management Cooperative Research Centre – an Australian national research centre funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Industry. The overall goal of the Centre is to build a cost-effective capability for space debris remediation using photon pressure delivered by ground-based lasers to move debris objects for collision avoidance. The research and development areas set out to achieve the goals are outlined and recent related research progress from the RMIT SPACE Research Centre perspective is reported.