Context:

ISRO’s recent launch of a Directorate of Space Situational Awareness and Management (DSSAM) is aimed at monitoring, tracking, and protecting India’s space assets.

DSSAM

• The Directorate of Space Situational Awareness and Management (DSSAM) has been established at ISRO, recognizing the need for dedicated efforts to tackle the emerging challenges of operating in an exceedingly crowded and contested space domain.
• Tracking debris in space, de-orbiting objects satellites from space, and ensuring the successful return and recovery of manned and unmanned payloads from space to earth.
• To meet this effort, the ISRO has developed and established various facilities such as the Network for Space Object Tracking and Analysis (NETRA), ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC).

KESSLER SYNDRONE

The Kessler syndrome is a theory proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, used to describe a self-sustaining cascading collision of space debris in LEO, where each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions.