pace Surveillance is the process of keeping track of the numerous satellites and pieces of debris currently orbiting the earth. Space surveillance has long been important to the military and to civilian space agencies such as NASA and the ESA, but it is becoming increasingly important to commercial satellite owners and operators as well. They must know where other satellites and pieces of debris are located in order to avoid collisions, which have disastrous consequences in space. If their satellites encounter on-orbit failures or anomalies, they will need to use any available information to help diagnose the cause of the problem so that they can either repair the problem or avoid such problems in the future.
The U.S. Air Force operates the world's largest space surveillance network, including optical telescopes and radar sites located around the globe. The three GEODSS optical telescope sites and the numerous narrow-band radar sites such as ALTAIR provide up-to-the-minute tracking of objects in space. More advanced optical and radar systems actually provide imagery of space objects, such as:
Stellar Science is working with the Air Force to enable it to make maximum use of the data that it receives, and is working to provide these capabilities to NASA and commercial satellite operators as well.
