Why in news?
The foundation for this centre has been laid in Bengaluru by ISRO.
The place
- ISRO has developed a Space Situational Awareness and Management Directorate to protect highly valued space assets from near approaches and collisions with space debris. To carry out systematically all activities related to SSAM, a control centre is being established at Bengaluru.
- The control centre would host a range of activities related to protecting Indian space assets against inactive satellites, pieces of orbiting objects, near-earth asteroids and adverse weather conditions in space.
- It would also assimilate the tracking data of inactive satellites from indigenous observation facilities and generates useful information from bare observations through analysis.
- It is important because of the rise of man-made space debris and the increased threat of collision with operating spacecraft.
- Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty asserts states that the presence of debris in outer space can arguably be considered as “harmful contamination” of this zone and, therefore, states parties to the Outer Space Treaty must adopt appropriate measures, which may include active debris removal, to mitigate them
