According to information provided by public databases in the United States, there are over 8,000 man-made objects in orbit around the Earth (excluding American military satellites, which is very confidential information). A number of these spacecraft fly over France every day, providing a potential danger to national security. It is therefore vital that the position of these orbiting objects should be known. ONERA's teams have designed and developed the GRAVES space surveillance system to establish and maintain a database of satellites flying over France at altitudes of less than 1,000 kilometers.