UKSA Space Safety Report June 2024: Key Take-Aways You Need To Know

The orbital landscape is changing rapidly, so it is important to have this constant monitoring of space-related threats. The National Space Operations Centre (NSpOC) has taken on this task and is successfully doing so. They inform the public every month about the results of this monitoring in their analytical report ‘How we protect the UK and space’.

Space debris is becoming a real threat

Imagine a scenario in which everyday services such as television, navigation, weather forecasting, and online banking, are disrupted by a a collision with a satellite.

In response to such challenges, the UK Space Agency and the US Department of Defence have established the National Space Operations Centre (NSpOC), which integrates and coordinates civilian and military space domain awareness (SDA) capabilities to enable operations and protect UK interests against threats, risks, and hazards associated with space.

General June Summary

According to a published report, the overall risks to UK interests in space and on Earth from space-related threats, hazards, and risks were lower in June than in May.

However, the number of re-entry and space weather incidents recorded was above average. Many re-entry objects were estimated to have burned up on re-entry and no UK-licensed satellites were involved in a collision. All NSpOC warning and defence services operated as normal.

Here are the main results of the space safety monitoring for June:

• 48 uncontrolled re-entries were monitored as part of the Uncontrolled Reentry Early Warning activity. This figure is 14 per cent lower than the same figure in May (56) and about 50 per cent higher than the average for the year. This is largely the result of the planned decommissioning of small communications satellites. Analysts predict that this trend will continue for at least another month.

• 1,881 warnings to UK-licensed satellite operators of the potential risk to collision avoidance in space. That’s a 35 percent decrease from the previous month.

• On 26 June, an inoperable Russian satellite collapsed in orbit, resulting in more than 100 new fragments, which may pose a hazard to operational orbiters. Mathematical modeling studies show that the bulk of the satellite could remain largely intact.
• 17 launches were made in June. This brings the U.S. satellite catalog with 244 new registered space objects. SpaceX carried out eight launches out of the total last month to deploy 173 Starlink satellites. The remaining 71 RSOs relate to previous months, new launches, deployed ISS satellites, or debris recently registered in the US satellite catalog.

• The Bureau of Meteorology issued 64 critical space weather warnings in June. This is 35 percent less than in May, even though space weather activity was relatively high at the beginning of the month. The weather bureau’s sensors and instruments recorded several solar flares and geomagnetic storms, the strongest of which came at the end of the month. This activity level should be expected to continue as we are near solar maximum. Overall the risk of adverse space weather events in the UK was under full control and space services such as GPS and high-frequency radio communications were not affected.

The main conclusion is that the protection of UK interests in space and on Earth from space-related threats, risks, and hazards is under the full and continuous control of the National Space Operations Centre.