Our fleet will help mitigate risks of space debris.
Space debris is an existential threat that is only increasing and can be a huge risk to spacecraft on orbit as well as human safety of crewed missions as we journey farther and farther from Earth. There are currently more than 27,000 objects being tracked by domestic and international governments and a growing cadre of commercial companies. But there is much more out there that us too small and/or too distant to be tracked, and any one of those could be disastrous in the event of a collision. That’s why we need comprehensive SSA (Space Situational Awareness) which is the knowledge and characterization of objects in space, and is part of SDA (Space Domain Awareness) which is a more comprehensive understanding of these resident space objects that allows better informed decisions about how to best navigate this environment.
Quantum Space is dedicated to building out the infrastructure that will deliver SDA information, allowing the entire space community to better tackle the issue of space debris. We can’t solve problems without knowledge, and we are at the forefront of building that knowledge.
Tackling space debris, like most problems, requires reliable data. We need to know how big the problem is before we can solve it. Are we talking about 100 objects the size of school buses? Or 1,000,000 objects the size of a pencil eraser? What is the size distribution in between? How far apart are the objects? In what orbit are the debris objects traveling? Is the object commandable (operational with propellant) or not? All these questions get to the complexity of the problem. To be clear, if your spacecraft suffers a collision, it’s irrelevant if was commandable or not - a loss is a loss. In the future, with better data than is presently available, the risk of collisions can be better managed.
Currently, there are multiple catalogs of objects in space. The Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), the Commerce Department’s space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic coordination (STC) capability is making great progress. These catalogs are extensiveThere is also a transition happening from the DOD owning the definitive catalog to Department of Commerce taking it over. By comparison, there are very few objects near the Moon. There are also a lot fewer instruments that are able to track resident space objects there. It’s an underserved area - no one is focused on cataloging objects in lunar orbits. Quantum Space is going to change that. We plan to create the preeminent lunar catalog that will improve the success and safety of everyone who is flying to, from or around the moon.
There are additional complexities to debris in this cislunar space. In LEO, there is still a bit of Earth’s atmosphere playing a cleansing role. By creating even a tiny bit of drag, it slows down debris, allowing it to eventually lose altitude and reenter the atmosphere and burn up. This advantage is not available out by the Moon. With zero atmosphere, any debris created from a collision will remain for an eternity. A lunar orbit collision will result in a forever problem, creating a collision risk for all spacecraft. This would hamper humanity’s exploration of moon, and could potentially be catastrophic. We saw this risk in 2021, when two spacecraft nearly collided in lunar orbit. If not for a collision avoidance maneuver performed by one of the two spacecraft, the impact would have certainly caused debris that would put everyone at risk. In short: collision debris in lunar orbits is forever.
As humans expand our reach beyond the Earth, to LEO and cislunar and beyond, we need to have a comprehensive understanding of the environment, including the space debris that is a risk to all expansion. At Quantum Space, we are dedicated to creating a better understanding of where we’re going, whether it is GEO or cislunar space. We are eager to help the space community by building the knowledge and SSA/SDA that will facilitate growth of a safe and powerful ecosystem in space.