Aerospace Monitoring and Control
Ground station as a service
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Atlar is the leading Portuguese entity in operation, monitoring and maintenance of the National Operations Center for Tracking and Surveying Space Debris, with a contract with the Ministry of Defense for the EU SST service.
The national SST program aims to guarantee its own capacity for monitoring, characterizing and tracking objects that, moving in close-Earth orbits, may pose a real danger to space infrastructures and to citizens on the Earth’s surface, such as re-entry and falling on the surface of objects coming from space.
This program allows the collection and processing of potentially sensitive data on the orbit, classification and possible identification of satellites, whose activities may contribute to or affect the actions of government entities, whereby the data collected and processed may be considered classified matters of high military, strategic, diplomatic and political relevance.
COpE
The Space Operations Center (COpE) constitutes the nerve center of the SST and is a fundamental element of the national SST network.
Although it is primarily intended to develop continuous and permanent operations, on a 24/24 basis, for surveillance and tracking of objects in orbit and the provision of associated services, it adds other functionalities for national training:
✓ Training and development skils in the Aerospace area;
✓ Functionality testing, connection to other SST Centers abroad;
✓ Dynamization of public activities for dissemination, training and education of the space environment.
The previously awarded services were involved in the assumption of the initial qualification of the SST-PT network. Having achieved this capacity, it is now necessary to improve and develop this same capacity to levels of proficiency and specialization adequate to the requirements of the national and international commitments assumed within the scope of the agreements of the European SST program and before the European consortium.
In order to maintain the high standards of quality, security, confidentiality and integrity of the data and information generated, as well as their treatment and development in the SST-PT network, we raise the levels of specialization and training of the human resources allocated to the provision of services.
Global satellite operators spend €14 million annually on debris impact deflection maneuvers
More than 99% of cases are false alerts
✓ One of our mission is to reduce the number of false alerts;
✓ And with that reduce greatly the costs of space traffic control.
Calibration
The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking (EUSST) consortium, of which Portugal is an active contributor, plays a crucial role in ensuring the integrity of European space assets and ground safety. This organization coordinates and validates calibration campaigns, recognizing the importance of accuracy in enabling informed decision-making processes such as maneuvering satellites to avoid collision. Meticulous calibration processes, ensure the reliability and accuracy necessary to safeguard European space assets effectively.
To carry out the calibration, observation plans are developed for Madeira (Tracking and Survey) and Pampilhosa (Survey) utilizing GNSS data, the collected observations are then compared against the reference data (TLE). During the calibration process, satellite orbits are regarded as the “ground truth.” By evaluating the residuals of observations in comparison to the reference orbit, valuable insights into sensor measurement noise and bias identification are obtained.
This information enables the compensation of identified biases and the establishment of bounds for measurement errors. Accurate observations are ensured through the utilization of calibrated sensors, effectively minimizing noise and artifacts such as pixel defects and thermal noise. Achieving precise timestamps for observations is also vital, taking into account factors like software execution delays and hardware elements. Customized systems are developed to minimize these effects and improve time accuracy. ATLAR Innovation went through four successful Calibrations Campaigns in the last year and the sensors are considered to be calibrated.
