TOWARD A SAFER SPACE: PRESENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES OF THE SPACE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT

In the last decades, the proliferation of the in-orbit population has become one of the main concerns for space agencies and institutions worldwide.

This congestion is further aggravated by space debris, which pose a significant threat to operational spacecraft and long-term sustainability of space activities.

To improve the safety, sustainability, and coordination of space operations, Space Traffic Management (STM) has emerged as a critical domain, encompassing the planning, synchronization, and regulation of in-orbit operations.

STM primarily relies on Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) services, including conjunction analysis, fragmentation monitoring, and re-entry predictions.

These services are powered by data collected from ground or space-based sensors, which can be optical, radar, passive RF and laser.

The seminar will explore the current state and future challenges of the STM and SST frameworks, highlighting emerging technologies and operational needs. It will be also the opportunity to present how Look Up is tackling this strategic domain.

The objective of this company is to meet the political and strategic challenges of space safety and security, by developing capabilities based on a globally distributed network of high-performance ground-based radars.

Speaker:

Juan Carlos Dolado is co-founder and CTO of Look Up Space, a Space safety and security company deploying a global and sovereign space safety solution. He is the former head of the space situational awareness office at the French Space Agency (CNES).

An internationally recognized expert in the field of space surveillance, Juan Carlos Dolado is also an International Academic of Astronautics (IAA) academician, member of the IAA's Space Debris Committee and member of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF)’s Space Traffic

Management Committee. Juan Carlos is also the former Chair of the modelling working group at the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC). He has published more than fifty scientific articles and has contributed to numerous primary reference works in the field of space debris surveillance and tracking.

PHOTO CREDIT: ESA/Alan Baker

17.06.2025