Page 33 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2021

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DEFENCE BUSINESS 33
MAIN: DST’s High Frequency Line of Sight Radar Receiver Array near Coondambo, captures signals reflected from overhead satellites, during SpaceFest 2019 at the Woomera Test Range in SA
BELOW: DST and RAAF personnel in front of a FireOPAL sensor developed in collaboration between Curtin University and Lockheed Martin Australia during SpaceFest 2019 at the Woomera Test Range in SA
WHY SDA IS IMPORTANT
Modern society is heavily dependent on space-based systems for its day-to-day existence. Things we all take for granted, such as ATMs, internet banking, mobile telephones, GPS- based navigation systems and vital services such as air traf- fic control are heavily dependent on space-based systems. From a Defence perspective, many modern
Space Force Base in California, where it is collated into a master Space Objects Catalogue and distributed (in un- classified form) to the wider space community.
With all of this in mind, the desire to have a sovereign awareness of space will be pivotal to a Defence satellite capability over the coming years.
“We know that space is not a benign environment where everyone plays nicely, we need to be able to independently verify whether our satellites are experiencing a malfunc- tion or if they’re under attack, so we can make the right decisions to protect and defend them,” Director General Air Defence and Space, Air Commodore Philip Gordon, explained. “SDA is absolutely critical to space control and everything we do in space. It seeks to give us an indepen- dent ability to assess and verify what’s going on in space, and at the same time contribute to a broader SDA enter- prise with the US and our allies.”
weapons, navigation and communications systems are also reliant upon satellite-based position and timing services.
Space is also becoming an increasingly congested environment and malicious in- tent by an enemy aside, the exponential growth of objects in space – both close to the surface in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and further out into the cosmos in Geostation- ary Earth Orbit (GEO) – increases the risk of collision on almost a daily basis.
“WE USE SPACE DAILY FOR UNDERSTANDING THE WEATHER, NAVIGATING, ACCESS TO GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION AND SHARING INFORMATION ACROSS AUSTRALIA OR ACROSS THE WORLD”
In addition, as powers in the Indo-Pacific region further develop intra- and inter-theatre missile capabilities, the knowledge of what should be in space and what shouldn’t has become a cornerstone of Australia’s desired Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) capability.
“We want to make sure we consider data on everything above the surface of the Earth (arbitrarily determined to be more than ap- proximately 100km), as it turns out, some of the things we really care about start in the atmosphere, travel through space and then come back into the atmosphere,” AIRCDRE Gordon added.
According to the European Space Agency
(ESA) in January 2021 there were more
than 34,000 objects orbiting the Earth,
each one larger than 10cm in size. Under its Starlink com- munications program, Elon Musk’s Space X has plans to add more than 40,000 satellites into LEO in coming years and the rapid commercialisation of the space industry is expected to add many thousands more.
Objects in orbit travel at speeds of around ten kilome- tres per second and even something as small as a flake of paint deposited in space during the launch
process has the potential to disable a sat-
ellite. Even worse, every collision creates
more space debris, further increasing the
risk of collisions occurring. This is known
as the Kessler Syndrome, named after
NASA astrophysicist Donald Kessler who,
in 1978, predicted the continued gen-
eration of space debris will reach a point
where collisions become inevitable.
Formerly known as Space Situational Awareness (SSA), Space Domain Aware- ness is therefore a critical priority and the largest contributor to this is the US, which maintains a network of sensors distributed around the world – including Australia – as part of its Space Surveillance Network (SSN). Data collected by the SSN is trans- mitted to the US Combined Space Op- erations Center (CSpOC) at Vandenberg
INITIAL STEPS
Australia has been contributing data to the US SSN in the civil domain for many years, largely through the capabilities of EOS Space from its facilities at Mt Stromlo in the ACT and Learmonth in WA. From a military standpoint, SDA activities are also being undertaken from Australia, albeit in conjunction with the US and our unique geographical
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