International surveillance of outer space for security purposes

Abstract The monitoring of dangerous and forbidden space activities is today carried out effectively and systematically only by the USA and USSR. This situation should be remedied by developing international means of surveillance of space activities. Different scenarios for the establishment of an International Agency for Space Surveillance (IASS) are considered and an attempt is made to assess the main political hindrances to its effective functioning. The authors then discuss a minimum set of requirements for the IASS, assuming that only current technology is used and that no attempt is made to track all low-orbiting objects systematically. The components of the agency, the required tracking systems and their performance are analysed; the achievable accuracy of orbit determination from tracking data is estimated by performing a suitable set of computer simulations.

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