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Gps Transponders for Space Traffic Management Andrew Abraham the Aerospace Corporation

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Gps Transponders for Space Traffic Management Andrew Abraham the Aerospace Corporation CENTER FOR SPACE POLICY AND STRATEGY APRIL 2018 GPS TRANSPONDERS FOR SPACE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT ANDREW ABRAHAM THE AEROSPACE CORPORATION © 2018 The Aerospace Corporation. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. OTR201800510 ANDREW ABRAHAM Dr. Andrew Abraham is a senior member of the technical staff in the Mission Analysis and Operations Department. He specializes in orbital debris, early orbit operations, conjunction assessment, maneuver planning, and reentry analysis. Abraham’s dissertation focused on the optimization of transfers to Lagrange point orbits using evolutionary algorithms. He has an M.S. in physics and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University. ABOUT THE CENTER FOR SPACE POLICY AND STRATEGY The Center for Space Policy and Strategy is dedicated to shaping the future by providing nonpartisan research and strategic analysis to decisionmakers. The Center is part of The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit organization that advises the government on complex space enterprise and systems engineering problems. Contact us at www.aerospace.org/policy or [email protected] Abstract The space community relies on a decades-old system for tracking satellites—one that was opti- mized for military use rather than the purposes of safety and commerce. This paper proposes a radically new way of thinking about space traffic management, founded on the use of onboard GPS transponders. This approach could correct various market inefficiencies while providing valuable benefits to the host spacecraft. GPS transponders can report a spacecraft’s position far more accurately, and with much less latency, than the current system. They can positively identify a spacecraft and allow operators to maintain a lock on it, even when it is thrusting or dead. As a result, military tracking resources can be liberated for other tasks. But how would such a system work, and what trade spaces need to be considered? Introduction community. Suddenly, the sky grew a bit smaller and Space is no longer the exclusive domain of a few select the need for space traffic management became a bit superpowers. Today, dozens of international organiza- more urgent. Still, no such space traffic management tions, national governments, commercial companies, system exists today. How might one build such a sys- universities, and even high schools have constructed, tem, and how would it improve flight safety? Would the launched, and operated satellites in Earth orbit. Since benefits of the system outweigh the costs? Who would the launch of Sputnik in 1957, more than 43,000 objects bear these costs? What are the technical, political, and have been launched into space.1 Nearly half of those ob- economic challenges, and how might they be overcome? jects are still in orbit today—yet only a few thousand Congested Space still serve a useful purpose. All others are considered debris, an unfortunate by-product of decades of human The first several decades of the Space Age relied upon activity in space. the “big sky” approach to collision avoidance. The as- sumption was that the volume of space is too large com- This assortment of uncontrolled space flotsam proved pared with the volume occupied by manmade objects fatal on Feb. 10, 2009, when an active communications to permit more than an exceptionally remote chance satellite (Iridium-33) collided with a defunct Soviet of collision. This assumption, however, begins to break military satellite (Cosmos-2251). The impact destroyed down if those objects significantly increase in number both satellites, reducing them to thousands (if not hun- and congregate into specific orbital slots rather than dreds of thousands) of equally lethal debris objects evenly distributing themselves throughout the entire 2 that will persist in Earth’s orbit for several decades. volume of near-Earth space. This was a wakeup call to many in the space operations 2 Presently, there are nearly 20,000 tracked objects in The Cost of Orbital Debris Earth orbit. This number is expected to grow substan- Normally, debris in the air or at sea is a transient prob- tially due to three major factors: commercial launch lem and, at most, a modest hazard. In contrast, debris prices are decreasing while the annual number of in orbit is highly threatening to other space objects and launches is increasing; the number of small satellites has can remain so for hundreds or even thousands of years. ballooned in recent years and the growth is projected Orbital debris can be lethal, as evidenced by Table 1. to increase; several “mega-constellations” (thousands of Even an object as small as 1 cm can cause catastroph- satellites) are being proposed by a number of compa- ic damage to a spacecraft. Furthermore, Table 2 illus- nies. The result of this increased activity is a space envi- trates the fact that these objects are not only small and ronment that is far more congested than it previously has been. Some estimate that the number of opera- Table 1: Debris Size vs. Energy tional satellites will increase by an order of magnitude and stretch the Mass (g): current space traffic management Debris Kinetic Equivalent Energy Aluminum 3 Size Energy (J) TNT (kg) Similar to… system beyond its limits. Sphere From a traffic management perspec- tive, one can expect an increased 1 mm 0.001 71 0.0003 Baseball number of conjunctions, collision warning messages, and collision 3 mm 0.038 1,910 0.008 Bullets avoidance maneuvers. Some esti- mates put the number of conjunc- 1 cm 1.41 70,700 0.3 Falling anvil tion warning messages from just one of these mega-constellations at 5 cm 176.7 8,840,000 37 Hit by bus 2,000–3,000 per day, with a hand- ful of them on the order of 50–100 10 cm 1,413.7 70,700,000 300 Large bomb meter miss distances. This implies a multiple order-of-magnitude in- At 10 km/sec: Typical LEO impact speed crease in the number of conjunction warnings that operators must re- spond to—clearly an unmanageable Table 2: The Trackability of Space Debris by Size situation if one wishes to safely op- erate in space. The cost of respond- Size Class Quantity Impact and Damage ing to each conjunction warning can be calculated by considering the Can’t be tracked number of staff-hours (often several 1–3 mm Tens of millions Localized damage dozen or more) needed to evaluate the credibility of the warning and Can’t be tracked 0.3–1 cm Millions then plan an appropriate response. Localized damage Upper limit of debris shielding If a collision avoidance maneuver Hundreds of is needed, the fuel used in its ex- 1–5 cm Most can’t be tracked ecution is given up only begrudg- thousands Major damage ingly since it is a highly cherished Tens of 5–10 cm Lower limit of tracking commodity. Propellant reserves are thousands Catastrophic damage usually the primary limitation of a spacecraft’s total mission life, and Tracked and cataloged by Space Surveillance 10+ cm Thousands Network lost life equals lost revenue. Causes catastrophic damage 3 Figure 1: The DoD Space Surveillance Network. deadly but also untrackable—and therefore impossible Figure 1) to track non-cooperative space objects (i.e., to avoid. Clearly, the longevity and lethality of orbital an object that does not assist with tracking efforts).4 debris presents the classic “Tragedy of the Commons” The system was originally constructed during the Cold problem by imposing a cost to all spacecraft operators. War to act as an early missile warning network as well This type of cost, known as a negative externality, is as to track activity in space. The U.S. Air Force’s Joint borne by operators unassociated with the mission that Force Space Component Command and the 18th Space created the debris in the first place. While sometimes Control Squadron work hand-in-hand to task this net- difficult to quantify, these costs must be accounted for work to observe space objects and aggregate this data in if a truly efficient and healthy market is desired. Even the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). Together, the mere existence of the spacecraft imposes a non-zero they are responsible for detecting, tracking, and iden- cost to other satellite operators (collision avoidance and tifying all objects in Earth orbit.5 Several other non- the potential to create debris) and should be accounted cooperating tracking networks are operated by defense for. agencies of other countries as well as a growing cadre of commercial companies capable of independently gen- Present Day Satellite Tracking erating proprietary data of varying quantity and quality. The value of GPS transponders lies with their ability to Regardless of the organization, measurements taken significantly improve space situational awareness and from a generic non-cooperative tracking network are enhance flight safety. It is helpful to review the current used to form predictions of where an object will be method of generating space situational awareness be- in the future. This is accomplished by using radar and fore comparing it to the GPS transponder. optical assets to measure the object’s position and ve- locity at a given moment in time. Of course, the pre- Non-Cooperative Tracking Network diction is never perfect, and errors in the estimate of a For the past several decades, the DoD’s Space space object’s position grow significantly over time. If Surveillance Network was the primary means of track- left unchecked for several weeks, this error can become ing space objects larger than a softball (smaller objects so large that the space object becomes lost. To prevent cannot be tracked). The Network consists of several sen- this from happening, the non-cooperative tracking net- sors (telescopes and radars) spread across the globe (see work tasks one or more of its sensors to look for a space 4 object before it is lost.
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