Hanwha Systems joins Korea's national space debris tracking system

Hanwha Systems said Friday it has signed a contract with the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) to join, as the private-sector developer, a national system for tracking and predicting collisions among objects in orbit. The deal, signed Sept. 9, makes Hanwha Systems a system developer for the Korean Space Situational Awareness system (K-SSA) — a project under the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), the country's space agency. Space situational awareness refers to observing and analyzing the position and orbit of objects in space to detect and forecast risks such as collisions or objects falling back to Earth. The company said the number of satellites in low Earth orbit has grown sharply in recent years, raising the risk of collisions between spacecraft and both artificial and natural objects in orbit — from defunct satellites to debris and meteoroids — and adding urgency to efforts to protect national space assets. Under the project, KASI will serve as the lead research institute, setting the mission, operating concept and system requirements for the K-SSA system