No abstract

No abstract

In 2002, the European Space Agency developed the first generation of conjunction warning tools in order to provide alerts and warnings for operational ESA satellites. Through numerous developments since the initial delivery, this tool became a fundamental part of the operational process for all ESA spacecraft. With the advent of the European Space Surveillance precursor programme, it was seen that the original software would have to be reengineered in order to improve dynamic services to customers outside of ESA. As a result, the first phase of the space surveillance and tracking segment to provide pre-operational services adapted the original software by providing a modern web-based front-end to the core software, hence retaining the original core algorithms but improving the interaction with the end user. This process also identified various requirements to modify the core software in order to comply with the SSA mission requirements. This was performed in phase two of the pre-operational services by dramatically improving the scope and capabilities of the core software as well as providing the ability to form part of a service oriented architecture. This paper will describe and investigate the steps taken in this development journey and the lessons learnt on the way.

The heart of an effective space surveillance system lies in the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the space object catalogue. The process to populate and maintain this catalogue is not a trivial exercise and requires the manipulation of heterogeneous observation data to both perform orbit determination and correlation with objects already identified. The process should be sufficiently robust to allow the automatic incorporation of new objects as well as alerting for lost objects without a large overhead in terms of manpower and human interaction. The European Space Situational Awareness precursor programme has been developing such a system as part of its Space Surveillance element. This paper describes how the original design criteria were incorporated into the development of this system, as well as its incorporation into a modern service oriented architecture.