Space Traffic Analytics
Definition of Traffic in the context of outer space activities:
Wikipedia uses the following disambiguation for traffic:
Traffic is road users including pedestrians and vehicles using the public way for purposes of travel.
In a wider context traffic can be defined as: Dynamic object behaviour in a defined (spatial) area.
In the given context of Outer-Space, traffic is the sum (or picture) of the dynamic of the conjunctions of space objects with each other.
Space Traffic Monitoring Reports are the analytics of the conjunctions of the objects in space in different contexts (e.g. age, owner, capabilities, distance, risk etc.)
What is available today is, in analogy to road traffic, something like accident statistics including car registration data. This is the view of single events, and the object statistics. A total view on the traffic in space is currently not established in the Space domain. What is existing and very well established is the strengthening of individual resilience (individual collision avoidance), masking the resilience of ‚Space as a System‘. Individual collision avoidance manoeuvres can have a strong impact on the system resilience (compare this to a car taking a quick unexpected turn to avoid an accident without taking care of other cars around and behind).
This results in the situation that for the moment only very limited possibilities exist to come to the right conclusions for managing the ‚traffic in Outer-Space‘. How should you apply space traffic management without monitoring the traffic? What is needed is space system analytics.
And this not only for the physical interference but in a holistic approach for all topics of space situational awareness.
Space Analyses have the expertise to create this holistic view. The first step of the physical space traffic monitoring is available in space traffic reports.
Governance
The complex juristic and administrative aspects were discussed and presented by Space Analyses in a very new and end-to-end proposal at the UNOOSA World Space Forum Nov 2019 with an Update for the UNOOSA COPOUS legal subcommittee scheduled for March 2020 and in the UNOOSA scientific and technical subcommittee in March 2021. A revised version was then presented in the preparatory meeting for the EU STM conference held on 07.07.2021.
Space Analyses is active in IAF formulating the space traffic management (STM) rules and will present a paper on the IAASS conference in Rotterdam in October 2021
Systemic Risk Assessment
Space can be seen as a territory, or as an environment of its own or, to go one step further, as one single system of Earth and its surrounding space environment. Risks in space (as a system) have an impact on the socio-economic environment on Earth and the other way round. Systemic analytics based on data collection and their analytics helps understand system behaviour. This is well-known and established in the climate change domain and is equally valid for the space system.
The holistic know-how of Space Analyses helps various stakeholders understand the risks resulting from risk scenarios and the resulting initiated consequences with a following chain of consequences, a chain of causality.
Space Sustainability Certificates
The space branch will in the near future face the need to deal with space sustainability certificates
Space Analyses proposed Space Sustainability Certificates as relevant document in the licencing progress of national states already in Nov 2019 at the UNOOSA World Space Forum. In the meantime, the World Economic Forum in a consortium with MIT, ESA and University of Texas Austin (among others) started to develop a space sustainability rating (SSR) with regular updates and refinements.
Space Analyses go a step further with its planned LTS (long term sustainability) certificates which will also integrate sustainability impacts on the (trans-national) socio-economic impact of existing and future missions.