ESA Space Safety

What's the Space Safety programme at European Space Agency - ESA about? This!

☄️ #PlanetaryDefence community gathered in Tokyo!   On 7 and 10 April, the planetary defence community gathered in Tokyo to exchange about objectives, updates and novel opportunities for Hera, #Apophis and #Ramses   This event coincided with the six-month celebration of #ESAHera's launch! In March, the mission treated us well with exciting views of two planets and their moons, but there is much more to come once it reaches the asteroid Didymos and its moonlet, Dimorphos, in late 2026.   Want to keep Hera company during its voyage through space? Ask Hera questions about the mission, space exploration, asteroids, and planetary defence 👉 www.hera.space

#PlanetaryDefence: New #HorizonEurope project to improve European asteroid-observation capabilities   Early this year, we had the pleasure to kick off the NEOPOPS project, that aims to improve the collection of physical observations of near-Earth objects by European facilities.   Building upon the success of the #Horizon2020 NEOROCKS project, #NEOPOPS will identify and increase observation capabilities of European observing facilities capable of performing physical observations of NEOs. The project will also improve their ability to perform rapid response observations and provide observations upon request.   The need to observe the 2024 YR4 asteroid has already proved the usefulness of this project, which has enabled European facilities to be coordinated effectively. In particular, the asteroid was observed by means of the TNG telescope after INAF requesting director's discretionary time to observe the object.   Coordinated by the European Space Agency, the project gathers several key European institutes such as INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, LIRA - Observatoire de Paris, Università degli Studi di Padova and the Armagh Observatory & Planetarium. The project is funded by the European Union.   📸 A series of 4 images of 2024 YR4 obtained with TNG-DOLORES on the night of 10 January 2025 (Credit: TNG/INAF). More information about the observations of 2024 YR4 👉 https://lnkd.in/eitjgVS8

At the CM25 Industry Event, Rolf Densing, our Director of Operations, together with colleagues presented ESA's Space Safety Programme to representatives of the European industry in the context of the upcoming ESA Council at Ministerial Level (CM25) in November.   What will we be expecting at CM25?   ☄️ Ramses, a rendez vous mission with the Apophis asteroid to monitor the close encounter with Earth and characterise with high-resolution before and after the encounter to assess its interaction with Earth's gravity ➕ Improved near-Earth object detection capabilities   ☀️ Vigil, an operational mission to L5 providing the capability to monitor and predict space weather activity and provide a timely warning of extreme solar events. ➕ Improvement and maturation of the ESA Space Weather Service Network ➕ Development of a Distributed Space Weather Sensor System (D3S) to monitor “Earth & Moon space” environment and provide near real-time data for operational applications   🛰️ Rise, a mission for the verification of life extension of a satellite from attitude and orbital control takeover. ➕ Technologies toward sustainable spaceflight ➕ Technologies toward a clean and zero debris future    The competitiveness segment aims at developing the space safety market and at exploiting commercialisation dimensions.   Keeping Europe, its people and its assets safe from asteroids, space weather and space debris can simultaneously be an opportunity to flourish in the growing markets of a sustainable future in space.   📸 ESA/Rowan Moorkens

💡Key takeaways from the new ESA 2025 Space Environment Report. Read the bite size summary of the status report on space debris and the effect mitigation standards on the numbers. It becomes clear that not adding debris is no longer enough, we need to actively clean up our orbital environment. Let’s dive in: 🔸Earth’s orbital environment is a finite resource. 🔸Satellites that remain in their operational orbit at the end of their mission are at risk of fragmenting into dangerous clouds of debris that linger in orbit for many years. 🔸The number and scale of commercial satellite constellations in certain low-Earth orbits continue to increase year over year. 🔸Within certain heavily populated altitude bands the density of active objects is now the same order of magnitude as space debris. 🔸Intact satellites or rocket bodies are now re-entering the Earth atmosphere on average more than three times a day.[ES1] 🔸Yet not enough satellites leave heavily congested orbits at the end of their lives, creating a collision risk. 🔸2024 saw several major fragmentation events as well as many smaller ones, together adding thousands of new debris objects, underlining the need for prevention by implementing passivation and reduced orbit lifetime measures. 🔸The adherence to space debris mitigation standards is slowly improving over the years, especially in the commercial sector, but it is not enough to stop the increase of the number and amount of space debris. 🔸Even without any additional launches, the number of space debris would keep growing, because fragmentation events add new debris objects faster than debris can naturally re-enter the atmosphere. 🔸This means that not adding new debris is no longer enough: the space debris environment has to be actively cleaned up to prevent the runaway chain reaction, known as Kessler syndrome, in certain heavily used orbits. Prefer the numbers & data plots? Find them through here 👉 https://lnkd.in/edW9hPyZ 📸The number of objects in Earth orbit, both active satellites and debris of various sizes. Credit: ESA.

ESA is not new to addressing the challenge of space debris. Today I opened the 9th edition of the ESA Space Debris Conference. ESA started organising this gathering back in 1993, when speaking about LEO as a finite resource might have sounded like a red herring to some. Ever since, ESA has consistently put the spotlight on the facts, raising awareness and bringing experts together every four years, working towards solutions. So, space debris: is it a problem? Comment below 👇

🙌The European Space Debris Conference, the biggest in the world, has kicked off! Get up to speed yourself with ESA’s two hot new releases: a short film on space debris & our hot-from-the-press 2025 Space Environment Report. Top experts are gathering at the four-day 9th European Space Debris Conference #9ECSD organised by European Space Agency - ESA to discuss space debris, space traffic management and the road to the more sustainable use of space. Let’s dive into some new resources and learn the latest on space debris: #UpdatesInNumbers Our Space Debris Office team has delivered its annual report on the environment in space around Earth. The 2025 Space Environment Report gives an overview of the number of satellites, re-entries and debris. It measures how well international debris-reduction efforts are improving the long-term sustainability of spaceflight. Find out all the data tells us 👉 https://lnkd.in/edW9hPyZ #IsItACrisis? The clock is most definitely ticking. A catastrophic chain reaction of space debris causing collisions, creating more debris again and again, is not just a possibility, it is already underway. In some orbital regions, our behaviour really could see us run out of space. Is it a crisis? Learn more about both the problem & the road to sustainability in space 👉 https://lnkd.in/e7m4ih_u Stay tuned here for more on space debris & the conference!

🏫 ☀️ Shaping tomorrow's experts: our space weather training was a hit!   This week, the ESA #SpaceWeather Office and ESA Academy gave the 3rd Space Weather Training Course to over 30 Masters and PhD students from across the Member States eager to learn more about the subject.   This unique, 5-day course provided an overview of space weather, including scientific and technological fundamentals, monitoring, forecasting, and its technological impacts.   Experts from across the agency took part to the course and introduced space weather from physics through to impacts along with experts from across Europe in key aspects of the space weather landscape.   This course provides an insight into the world of space weather, and it will be delivered through lectures by ESA experts.   In addition to the lectures, the participants will gain hands-on experience with space weather tools and will be able to tour some of the key facilities like ESA’s Space Weather Coordination Centre in Brussels and ESA's Proba Mission Control Centre in Redu.   Upon completion of the workshop, students received a certificate of participation and course transcript, allowing them to request #ECTS credits from their respective universities.   Learn more about space weather at ESA 👉 https://lnkd.in/eZ-a_P-A   Interested in knowing more about other ESA Academy trainings? 👉 https://lnkd.in/eV4jnq2S Alexi Glover | Juha-Pekka Luntama | Melanie Heil | David R Williams | Matteo Losacco | Bruno Sousa | Marco Vuolo | René Wittmann

👋 Farewell Gaia - we hope you enjoy your retirement orbit!   By putting into the satellite into a ‘retirement orbit’ around the Sun, the Gaia team prevents it from drifting back towards its former home near the scientifically valuable second Lagrange point (L2) of the Sun-Earth system and minimise any potential interference with other missions in the region.   This is a strong demonstration of ESA's commitment to dispose responsibly of its missions and ensure a #ZeroDebris space environment.   Learn more about ESA's guidelines for a sustainable space 👉 https://lnkd.in/eAcjd-er

#IADC: Collaborative efforts towards a cleaner space environment   The Inter-Agency Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) is holding its 43rd meeting at ESOC, ESA’s European space operations centre, the same place where the committee's original formation took place. We are honoured to host for the tenth time this key forum for coordination among space debris experts from the major space agencies.    Yesterday, the Committee listened to remarks from Rolf Densing, ESA Director of Operations, Aarti Holla-Maini, Director of United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), and Francesca Letizia, ESA Space Debris Mitigation & Re-Entry Safety Engineer.    Over the last decades, the IADC has successfully stimulated consensus, with as a key result its space debris mitigation guidelines that are regularly updated. Find out more about the IADC: https://lnkd.in/eBRWAvq9 📸 Group photo at IADC's 43rd meeting, credit: ESA/J.Mai