ISRO released the Indian Space Situational Assessment Report (ISSAR) for 2023 compiled by ISRO System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management (IS4OM) on April 2, 2024.
Key points
- Space assets operating in outer space are vulnerable to various environmental hazards- natural objects like asteroids, comets, and meteoroids, energy and particle flux, and artificial space objects.
- Therefore, continual awareness of the space environment and its future evolution, namely Space Situational Awareness (SSA), becomes an essential pre-requisite for safe and sustainable operations in outer space.
- During the year more space objects were placed in orbit compared to the previous year. A total of 3143 objects originating from 212 launches and on-orbit break-up events were added to the space object population in 2023 compared to 2533 objects from 179 launches in 2022.
- There were five major on-orbit break-up events in 2023. Some of these fragments decayed within the same year, resulting in a net addition of 69 fragmented objects to the population of space debris by the end of 2023.
- Since the beginning of the Indian space era, a total of 127 Indian satellites, including those from private operators/academic institutions, have been launched till 31st December 2023.
- In the year 2023, all seven launches of ISRO, namely SSLV-D2/EOS7, LVM3-M3/ONEWEB_II, PSLV-C55/ TeLEOS-2, GSLV-F12 NVS-01, LVM3-M4/ Chandrayaan-3, PSLV-C56/ DS-SAR, and PSLV-C57/Aditya L-1, were successful. A total of 5 Indian satellites, 46 foreign satellites, and 8 rocket bodies (including POEM-2) were placed in their intended orbits.
