site.btaBulgaria Aims to Become Member of EU Space Surveillance and Tracking System

Bulgaria aims to become a member of the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking system and to be able to receive data from other countries that have such monitoring devices, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences' Space Research and Technology Institute (SRTI-BAS) Director, Georgi Zhelev, told BTA. He explained that the other countries have ground-based devices.

"We have the capability and the capacity, but we also need some funding, in terms of membership fees, to start building these facilities. We need to make a network in our country - in five or six places where telescopes and facilities can be built to monitor and be able to locate space debris," he added.

If nothing is done, these sites will, in time, begin to cluster and become even more dangerous, Zhelev noted. A risk assessment is also needed when locating an object - to see how big it is, how fast it is moving and what its trajectory is. Methods also need to be developed to prevent these over-concentrations of space debris in Earth orbit, said the SRTI-BAS Director. 

"In principle, Bulgaria does not generate space waste because we do not have active launches and we do not have so many satellites, but the main countries that do are the US, Russia, even Europe - through the European Space Agency, with the launches of European satellites, as well as China, India, Japan," he explained.