The constellation Skylark will be the first commercial mission focused on Space Situational Awareness (SSA), that is, the monitoring of assets in low, medium and high orbits to provide information on space traffic, avoid collisions and supply timely and accurate navigation services to the entire satellite community. It was conceived by the start-up NorthStar Earth & Space, created three years ago by Telesystem Space (a joint venture of the family office Sirois, Telesystem and the Roger's Family Trust of Canada), Space Alliance (Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio) of Europe, KinetX (from the United States), the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada.
The launch of the first three satellites of a fleet of twelve in total is scheduled for 2022. Last November it was known that NorthStar would hire Thales Alenia Space for these first artifacts. They promise a near-real-time, high-fidelity tracking service that would elevate traditional SSA capabilities to the Spatial Information and Intelligence (SI2) level, by complementing with the Montreal-based company's analytics and applications development. Then, in 2024, NorthStar will expand the Skylark mission with dual mission satellites, for both SSA and Earth observation. In this case, the artifacts will have hyperspectral, infrared and optical sensors.
Jean-Philippe Arseneau, Head of Communications and Public Relations at NorthStar Earth & Space, explained to Convergencialatina that currently, satellites are monitored with radars or optical sensors from Earth. In LEO, this task is complicated by the constant movement of the artifacts, the size of the constellations - which will increase significantly in the coming years due to the multiple projects for low orbit - and the atmospheric conditions. “There is no precision about the location of objects in space. With the explosion of business in LEO and increasing government uses, being able to monitor space from space itself may be the right solution at the right time”, he said.
The main resource that exists today for tracking the 12,000 objects calculated in the three orbits is the public access site of the US government Space-Track.org. “With Skylark a broader catalog will be achieved, with the possibility of following small objects due to their danger of collision and with better precision. It will be determined where it is, where it will be and if it is close to hitting another object”, said Arseneau.