The head of ESA’s Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme, Nicolas Bobrinsky, provides an overview of the programme’s goals and progress.
Nicolas also answers questions on the continuing development of Europe’s ability to find and track hazardous space debris objects.
The objective of the SSA programme is to support Europe’s independent utilisation of, and access to, space through the provision of timely and accurate information and data regarding the space environment, and particularly regarding hazards to infrastructure in orbit and on the ground.
In general, these hazards stem from possible collisions between objects in orbit, harmful space weather and potential strikes by natural objects, such as asteroids, that cross Earth’s orbit.