Coronavirus Update: ESA Still Monitoring Possible Space Collisions Amid Pandemic

Space debris collisions are a growing threat that various space agencies have been watching closely. Even amid the coronavirus pandemic, the European Space Agency (ESA) is still monitoring the possible threat.

The majority of ESA mission control staff members began working from home last March 16 because of the coronavirus pandemic, with staffing is now comparable to weekend levels. In fact, according to ESA Director of Operations Rolf Densing, ESA's mission control center never had a period of having so few people on the site in its history.

That said, critical activities such as the upcoming Earth flyby of BepiColombo as well as monitoring space debris continues for the agency.

"We consider the continued monitoring of any potential collisions, and performing maneuvers to avoid these, one of our highest priorities," Head of Space Safety Holger Krag said. "We will be able to protect our spacecraft from collisions remotely, even in any much-degraded situation with a minimum of personnel and equipment present on site."

Such threats will continue to be monitored and, should a threat require action, the necessary people will be ready to come in and perform the necessary avoidance procedures.

Collision Avoidance Manoeuvres

Each week, mission teams handle hundreds of possible collision alerts and, often, the risks for collision decrease as time passes. However, there are some cases wherein the risk does not decrease like the others.

Once the probability for a collision is greater than 1 in 10,000, various mission teams prepare a collision avoidance maneuver to be uploaded to the satellite in danger of a collision.

For instance, in 2019, the ESA was contacted by the 18th Space Control Squadron of the US Air Force about a possible collision between the ESA's Aeolus Earth observation satellite and one of the first 60 satellites in SpaceX’s Starlink mega constellation.

As the days passed, the risk for a collision only increased but, the Starlink team informed ESA that they had no plans of taking any action at that point. Once the 1 in 10,000 threshold was reached, ESA prepared and eventually performed the avoidance maneuver to increase Aeolus’s altitude by 350 meters, causing it to pass over the Starlink satellite.

Unfortunately, such close calls will likely only increase as humanity continues to send out more and more satellites and other debris into space. The Starlink mega constellation alone is expected to eventually add a total of 12,000 satellites to the thousands of space objects already in orbit.

On average, the ESA performs two collision avoidance maneuvers each year to move a spacecraft into an orbit where it will not collide with space debris

Although the avoidance process between satellites is largely manual today, the ESA is also developing an automatic collision avoidance system that can assess the likelihoods of space collisions, determine whether a maneuver would be necessary to prevent it and, even send the order for a satellite to move out of the way.