Space Weather Workshop - SWF Operations Director Suzanne Metlay presents on Space Weather and SSA

Dr. Suzanne Metlay, Operations Director for Secure World Foundation ended the first day of the Space Weather Workshop with a talk entitled "Space Weather and International Space Situational Awareness." She began her talk by defining SSA and highlighting the need for it by citing the the Iridium 33-Cosmos 2251 collision earlier in the year.

Metlay then described how SSA serves as the foundation for debris mitigation, debris removal and space traffic management. The idea is to provide all space actors access to the tools needed for safe and sustainable used of outer space. She then went on to differentiate civil SSA from military SSA by describing civil SSA as more focused on positional data whereas military SSA requires much more data such as mission objectives and the nature of sensors or transponders.

Metlay pointed out that SSA data is collected by the DoD (via the Space Surveillance Network), the International Scientific Optical Observation Network (ISON) and other sources, which can then be filtered through a data clearing house for owner-operators. On such system is called SOCRATES-GEO (an example of processing and standardizing raw data on GEO satellites for owner-operators, provided by the Center for Space Standards and Innovation). The idea, ultimately, is to eventually produce a SOCRATES-type system for all Earth orbital regimes (a central data center, for example).