Far out in space, a group of Chinese satellites engaged in what was termed practice dogfighting, observed with interest and concern by the US and others including Australia.
From Mount Stromlo in the ACT and Learmonth in Western Australia, Canberra-based defence and space company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) was among those watching these manoeuvring Chinese satellites.
“There are a lot of interesting things going on up in space,” Executive Vice-President for EOS Space Systems, Dr James Bennett, noted.
In space terminology, this is termed rendezvous and proximity operations, which can be performed for entirely peaceful reasons.
“If they are going to dock with one another, obviously they come all the way in. One of the ones we looked at recently came within a kilometre in GEO which was very close,” Bennett told ADM at the Avalon Airshow.
GEO is geostationary orbit, around 36,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, where civil and military communications and observation satellites are located.
“There are a lot of valuable assets up there. The thing is, rendezvous and proximity operations also look a lot like a common commercial operation where, for example, there are transfer services between satellites,” he said.
In these recent cases, these Chinese proximity operations involved their own satellites. Had they done it to a US military surveillance or communications satellite, for example, there would have been very real cause for concern.
US Space Command called this “practicing dogfighting” for a future conflict in which an opening act could be to destroy or deny an opponent’s critical space assets.
“Definitely it is watched a lot closer when they are doing that,” Bennett said.
“We provide information on those activities. It all goes into a pool.”
EOS specialises in high fidelity space domain awareness (SDA), observing and tracking objects in space, including satellites and debris.
SDA data is sold to the US and to the Australian Defence Force to supplement their SDA capabilities.
Bennett said EOS could do what many others can’t - track in daytime using lasers and infrared.
“That is not easy to do and we are one of the few places around the world that can do it. Coupled with our high energy laser, that means we bring quite unique capabilities into global SDA operations,” he said.
That is a series of advanced abilities not widely appreciated outside the space and defence community.
EOS’ expertise is in accurate tracking of distant objects, a capability which flowed into their vehicle-mounted Remote Weapon Stations (RWS), used by the ADF and other nations, as well as high energy lasers able to target drones, satellites and space debris.
The Low Earth Orbit (LEO) region of space is crowded with satellites, both operational and defunct, plus a vast quantity of space junk, with the ever-growing risk of collisions which would produce more debris.
Bennett said EOS was working on solutions for pushing objects in space using photon pressure from high energy lasers.
That is a promising and cost-effective means of slowing or moving objects enough so that they avoid collisions and eventually de-orbit.
“The idea is that we buy time by helping to avoid collisions. If an object is manoeuvrable, it can move out of the way. If not, then being able to do so remotely is a huge advantage. A key enabler to laser manoeuvre is the accuracy of the orbit path prediction. We can predict very accurately due to our precise laser tracking.
“As the technology scales, we will be able to engage repeatedly to de-orbit an object.
“What we are working towards is scaling this out to a global network. That would enable the geometry to work. A single site is not enough. Our pathway is to demonstrate it in a controlled environment then look at scaling that up.”
Could such a laser damage or dazzle an unfriendly nation’s passing satellites?
“That’s an interesting one. We avoid illuminating active satellites with these lasers. They definitely have application in the deterrence of poor actions in space,” Bennett said.