In April the European Space Agency (ESA) put on the 7th European Conference on Space Debris in Darmstadt, Germany.

In this conference academicians and industrialists gave an account of the latest research and new space-debris-reducing technologies. GMV, with an active track record in this area since the nineties, featured prominently in the conference, presenting several papers: “Automated Attitude Estimation from ISAR Images”; “GMV-ISON Combined Optical Campaigns”; “Stare & Chase: Optical pointing determination, orbit calculation and satellite laser ranging with a single pass”).

GMV also presented two posters: “Generic Data Reduction Framework for Space Surveillance” and “ESA’s SST data centre integration”. Neither did its intervention stop there. Alberto Águeda, GMV Aerospace’s Flight Dynamics & Operations manager, chaired the sessions on astrodynamics and space-surveillance applications.

GMV’s current space-debris R&D has two main strands: firstly, active debris removal projects and secondly, space surveillance and tracking activities to forestall collisions, detect orbiting fragments and analyze the risk of objects reentering the Earth’s atmosphere.