Space Computing: Global Open Science and AI in Space
Day: Thursday 2 October
Time: 10:15 - 11:15 AEST
Location: Parkside 2
AI in space is a hot topic with a myriad potential applications and shared benefits and huge opportunities but with a concomitant need for international collaboration and robust, enforceable governance under globally agreed space law. While open science is a worthy goal in practice this is hard to achieve in any domain including Space and use of LEO. In this talk I will concentrate on three key issues surrounding application to ameliorating the existential threat to the LEO ecosystem to all satellites, spacecraft and space stations posed by the so called Kessler Syndrome, the cascading, catastrophic collapse of LEO as a viable resource due to the impact of space debris.
- Smart Traffic management – Starlink satellites performed 144,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres between December 2024 and May 2025. This compares to 25,000 during the equivalent interval the previous year. This stark statistic illustrates the growing risks of the Kessler Syndrome. Autonomous ability for space assets to respond to imminent threats via AI on board is an emerging need
- Smart debris monitoring – various jurisdictions monitor large debris items >10cm though the acquired data is not adequately shared. Possible collision avoidance manoeuvres are currently conservative, largely because the calculated orbital parameters are not sufficiently defined to obviate the need for unnecessary asset movements. Missing by 1m is the same as by 100m – AI models can potentially be employed to proactively simulate large numbers of orbital predictions and avoidance scenarios in real time
- Smart debris removal missions – while no current, practical cost-effective solution to debris remediation technologies is available huge research efforts are underway. It is likely any viable solutions will require AI technologies to assist in onboard assessments for tackling and matching debris movements prior to remediation (spinning, tumbling etc)
Moderator
Speakers
Hamid MEHMOOD
Scientific Affairs Officer (Head of UN-SPIDER Beijing Office), United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)
China