Recently, Numerica Corporation was announced as an expert partner of the UK Space Agency to support the organization’s international effort to foster safe and sustainable space operations. Numerica operates a global telescope network of more than 20 sites to help protect government and commercial satellites from on-orbit hazards and threats.
According to the UK Space Agency, orbital congestion and space debris remains one of the biggest global challenges facing the space sector. There are currently an estimated 900,000 pieces of space debris including old satellites, spent rocket bodies and even tools from astronaut missions orbiting Earth. Space debris can stay in orbit for hundreds of years and present a real danger to the rapidly increasing number of new satellites being launched each year. To address this issue, Numerica is providing high-quality space surveillance and tracking (SST) data from a worldwide network of optical telescopes powered by state-of-the-art software to help keep UK satellites operating safely.
Through this partnership, high-quality observations produced by the Numerica Telescope Network (NTN) on behalf of the UK Space Agency, will enable enhanced space domain awareness of UK-licensed satellites in deep-space including GEO, MEO and HEO. This data will allow the UK Space Agency to better estimate the position, velocity, and trajectory of satellites to mitigate the risk of collision with other space objects.
“Numerica is thrilled to support the UK Space Agency with their mission of space sustainability through the use of innovative satellite tracking capabilities,” Jeff Aristoff said, vice president of space systems at Numerica. “We developed the Numerica Telescope Network for operations just like this to help prevent collisions in space and to keep watch over this increasingly important domain.”
Founded in 1996, Numerica focuses on creating innovative solutions to the most pressing technical challenges faced by customers in the areas of air and missile defense and space domain awareness. Headquartered in Fort Collins, and with a second office in Colorado Springs, Numerica’s rapidly growing team of talented research scientists and engineers tackle data science problems by developing advanced algorithms to power mission-critical national security software. This year, Numerica celebrates 25 years of developing state-of-the-art technologies that have been deployed around the world to integrate networks, fuse data, precisely track targets, and quantify uncertainty.