KAIRA SCIENCE  :  Overview  |  Data Policy  |  Reference  |  Acknowledgements  |  Schedule  

Space Situational Awareness

Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is the capability to monitor space craft, space debris, near-earth objects and space weather effects.

At present, KAIRA is actively monitoring space weather through the multibeam spectral riometry, interferometric riometry and solar monitoring programmes. It also undertaking a near-earth object study, although this is still in the data-gathering stage and no conclusive results have been obtained.

KAIRA has done some initial demonstrations of satellite tracking (REF).

Space debris is the commonly used collective term for the population of defunct artificially-createdobjects in space, especially low Earth orbit. These include old satellites and spent spacecraftcomponents, as well as the fragments from their disintegration and collisions.

The common frequency between KAIRA and the EISCAT VHF permits preliminary studies of space debris to be carried out. KAIRA would add a bi-static multi-beam capability to such an experiment. However, at this stage no experiments have been carried out.

The EISCAT VHF is due to be decommissioned in 2021/2022. In January 2019, an initiative was started by NORCE (Norwegian Research Centre AS) to convert the VHF to a dedicated space debris radar (REF). This programme is referred to as the Troms Space Debris Radar. However, it would most likely increase the transmission frequency of the system, and thus put it outside of the operating frequencies of KAIRA.

The replacement EISCAT 3D system will operate at KAIRA frequencies, thus allowing KAIRA to potentially participate in future multi-beam, multi-static space debris monitoring programmes.

• Real-time monitoring – up-to-date plots of KAIRA data products.
• KAIRA Data Sheet – technical details and parameters for the KAIRA system.