United States Space Surveillance Network

As Space Surveillance System is a network of telescopes and radars called that is used to maintain a catalog of artificial space objects (operational satellites, space debris ) are used. Systems of this type are currently operated by the United States and Russia. The development of a European system is promoted under the name Space Situational Awareness of the Space Agency ESA.

The U.S. Space Surveillance Network ( SSN )

This system consists of 17 radars and eight telescopes. Even a space-based sensor, the Space Based Visible telescope is being introduced. The number of space objects that are currently being tracked by the Space Surveillance Network ( SSN ), amounts currently to about 13,000. Open access are currently only data for about 8,600 objects. Depending on the orbit of the smallest of the objects contained in the catalog have a diameter of 5 cm ( low earth orbit ) to 50 cm ( geostationary orbit ). This radars are beneficial for the nearby objects, for the distant optical telescopes.

In addition to finding new objects cataloged objects are alternately observed shortly to update their path data at near objects more than once per day. The large amount of data is, inter alia, of telescopes ( Ground-based Electro- Optical Deep Space Surveillance shortly GEODSS ) on Maui, Diego Garcia, Socorro, New Mexico, as well as phased-array radars, such as Thule, Eglin and Cobra Dane, which are not as sensitive to small objects, but discover through their electronically pivoting beam larger objects more quickly - a military requirement.

The French GRAVES

GRAVES (French grand réseau à la veille adapté spatial ) is a French military radar system since 2005 and is used for orbit determination of artificial satellites.

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