SMARTnet™ and BACARDI

Abstract

For a better understanding of the space environment and for safe and secure satellite operations, the German Space Operation Center (GSOC) together with the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) have established SMARTnet™. Its main purpose is to act as an exchange platform for observational data of resident space objects. Its operation started in 2017 with telescope stations located in Switzerland and South Africa, and it was opened for international cooperation and exchange afterwards. Its first international Partner, Applied Defense Solutions, joined SMARTnet™ in 2018. In this paper, an overview of data of SMARTnet™, Partners, and statistics are given. To achieve the aforementioned objectives of research and safe operations, the Backbone Catalogue of Relational Debris Information (BACARDI) was invented, designed, and implemented. This is a joint effort of DLR’s Institute of Simulation and Software Technology (SC) together with GSOC. BACARDI is mainly divided into a database, containing data and their respective metadata as well as processors for e.g. orbit determination, object correlation, or orbit propagation. In this paper, an overview of the architecture of BACARDI is shown, and the concept of the processing chains is presented. For resident space objects, a 3D visualization tool was designed and implemented by SC. Its capabilities and potentialities are demonstrated.