The satellites must be protected with active shielding against space fragments, including the ability to perform maneuvers

This is what Midad Farinta, CEO of the Specialist Company, says at the conference of the Yuval Na'eman workshop that dealt with the topic of "Cyber ​​and Security in Space" that took place this week at Tel Aviv University

Israel must adopt the European approach and develop active protection against space debris for its satellites, and not be satisfied with passive protection. This is what Mided Farinta, CEO of the Specialist company, suggests at the conference of the Yuval Na'man workshop that dealt with the topic of "cyber and security in space" held this week at Tel Aviv University.

In his lecture, Prienta described the phenomenon of space debris: a collection of objects that surround the earth and which were created by humans but no longer bring any benefit. Until now, the approach was that space is big and the satellites are small, so there is no fear, and others argued that as long as no disasters occurred, it was not that bad. However, to illustrate the severity of the problem, out of 21 components larger than 10 centimeters that are being monitored, only 3,500 (about 16%) are active satellites.

Another source of space debris is the Anti-satellite weapons (ASAT), whose purpose is to destroy strategically dangerous military satellites of the adversary. The USA and the USSR freely tested anti-satellite weapons during the 11s and 2007s. On January 21, 2008, China destroyed its old weather satellite with a missile. Just a little over a month later on February 193, XNUMX, the US destroyed its failed intelligence satellite, USA-XNUMX.

And of course there have been incidents of collisions in space. Near collision events occur many times a day. A passive scanning and tracking system (SOCRATES) monitors the movement in space to identify the bodies that pose a danger and plans maneuvers in order to avoid these fragments.

Kessler syndrome

The density of objects in orbit around the Earth is so high that a collision between objects can cause flooding of small particles, which in turn can cause further collisions. 42% of all cataloged space fragments originate from only 19 events.

On August 11, 1993, an unknown object collided with the British satellite Olympus 1, causing it to be paralyzed and drift in an uncontrolled orbit. On July 24, 1996, the French military satellite Cerise was hit by a part of the Ariane 1 launcher. On March 29, 2006, the Russian communications satellite Express-AM11 went out of control due to the coolant leak, and there are high chances that it will be damaged by fractures.
But Iridium operators didn't care, because they believed in June 2007 that the chance of a collision was 1 in 50 million (John Campbell, senior vice president of the company). It turns out that on the day the collision between the Iridium satellite and the Russian Cosmos satellite occurred, this possibility was not included in the list of expected events at all.

On October 28, 2010, the 3 ton EUTELSAT W5.4B communications satellite suffered a leak after separating from the Harian launcher and was later declared unusable.
On June 28, 2011, the International Space Station was evacuated to the Soyuz spacecraft docked there due to fear of damage by a Russian piece of space debris that was discovered at the last moment, and fortunately it missed the station by 250 meters.

On August 18, 2011, a 5.7-ton spacecraft named EXPRESS AM-4 was incorrectly placed in orbit and now poses a risk to the GPS and GEO satellites.
ž

Awareness of space emergencies

There is a need to increase awareness of malfunctions in space and in general the correct way to operate in space to ensure the satellites and astronauts stay in space in a reasonable manner. For this purpose, the awareness of emergencies in space must be developed (Space Situation Awareness or SSA for short).

"The purpose of the SSA is to support the use and access to space through the provision of accurate and real-time information, and services concerning the space environment, and especially regarding the dangers to the infrastructure in orbit and on the ground."
"The American attitude", says Farinta, "is that everyone is against us", we need to know about everything that goes around in space and we need to know what damage it may cause. This approach gave birth to the "Socrates" monitoring and surveillance system and the passive defense. On the other hand, the Europeans say that what drives us is the commercial (commercial) issue. Space is the center of the global economy, even simple banking operations, so we need to ensure the continuity of the ability to operate in space so that we don't end up in a Koestler syndrome situation."

"The problem: there are no laws in space, only agreements and understandings. The passive warning systems failed even once to prevent disasters that happened. The time has come for active action. I call on Israel to lead the issue of shielding satellites and propose to be in the European environment.
A few weeks ago at the SPACE EU conference in Brussels, Astrium's vice president said - 'We are looking for active solutions for shielding satellites - that can be evaded in real time'. Israel must also adopt this approach." Parinta concludes.