ONGOING ACTIVITIES

The Surveillance and ProxImity operations REsearch (SPIRE) team of Politecnico di Milano is committed to contributing to global initiatives in space traffic monitoring and driving the development of advanced technologies for in-orbit satellite servicing. Research activities are divided in two main areas:

Space Situational Awareness (SSA)/Space Traffic Monitoring

• Space objects cataloguing
• Space Surveillance and Tracking services: Reentry, Fragmentation, Conjunction analysis and Collision avoidance
• Military SSA: maneuver detection, anomaly detection, threat assessment, threat mitigation, satellite protection

Proximity operations

• Imageprocessing and synthetic image generation
• Autonomous guidance and navigation strategies for proximity operations
• Space manipulators

FUTURE PLANS

Future initiatives will focus on enhancing the group's expertise in space surveillance and ensuring the safe operation of satellites engaged in proximity maneuvers. Key developments will target: advancing the precision of predictive techniques for nonlinear dynamic scenarios; formulating effective operational maneuver strategies to manage the increasingly congested space environment; adapting and extending circumterrestrial methodologies to support space traffic monitoring within the cislunar domain; ensuring safe navigation around unknown objects in space; creating relative navigation strategies that integrate and optimize the use of diverse sensor systems; designing robust methods and pipelines to enable teleoperation of robotic arms in orbit.

ONGOING PROJECTS

In the years 2022-2024, the SPIRE group has secured or helped to secure 4.9M€ within the research projects:

1. CATTool, Aeronautica Militare, 2022
2. Supporto esterno per il processamento dati, analisi delle campagne di calibrazione e attività operazionali, INAF, 2023
3. Software update for the new configuration of BIRALES, INAF, 2021-2022
4. Aggiornamento del software di determinazione orbitale a supporto di ISOC 3.0 per Leonardo S.p.A, 2023
5. Attività tecnico-scientifiche di supporto a C-SSA/ISOC e simulazione di architetture di sensori per SST, ASI, 2023-2026, ISTAR, collaboration with COMPASS Lab
6. Next Generation – Croce del Nord (NG-CROCE) per Ministero dell’Università - Unione Europea, 2023-2026
7. ASI-IHS, 2023-2024, ASI, 700 k€, collaboration with COMPASS Lab
8. ESA On-Orbit Breakup Forensics, ESA, 2024-2025, collaboration with COMPASS Lab
9. Detriti spaziali e sostenibilità delle attività spaziali a lungo-termine, ASI, 2023-2026, collaboration with COMPASS Lab
10. Sviluppi software a supporto di CSSA, Aeronautica Militare, 2024-2025
11. INTEGRAL, EU EDIDP, 2021-2024
12. AstroTwin, Nurjana, 2024-2025
13. GEORyder, EU
14. ASSAI, EDA, 2023-2026
15. ASTRA, Aeronautica Militare, 2024
16. EMISSARY, EDF, 2024-2028
17. ELECTROCAM, ESA, 2021-2023
18. LEO2VLEO, EDA, 2024-2025
19. ORBITHOOD, ESA, 2024-2025, collaboration with COMPASS Lab

Journal Publications 2022-2024

In the years 2022-2024 the SPIRE group produced 33 journal publications.