Non-traditional Sensor Tasking for SSA: A Case Study

摘要

Industry has recognized that maintaining SSA of the orbital environment going forward is too challenging for the government alone. Consequently there are a significant number of commercial activities in various stages of development standing-up novel sensors and sens or networks to assist in SSA gathering and dissemination. Use of thesesystems will allow government and military operators to focus on the most sensitive space control issues while allocating routine or lower priority data gathering responsibility to the commercial side. The fact that there will be multiple (perhaps many) commercial sensorcapabilities available in this new operational model begets a common access solution. Absent a central access point to assert data needs, optimized use of all commercial sensorresources is notpossibleand the opportunity for coordinated collections satisfying overarching SSA-elevating objectives is lost. Orbit Logic is maturing its Heimdall Websystem- an architecture facilitating "data requestor" perspectives (allowing government operations centers to assert SSA data gathering objectives) and"sensoroperator" perspectives (through which multiple sensors ofvarying phenomenology and capability are integrated via machine-machine interfaces). When requestors submit their needs, Heimdall's planning engine determines tasking schedules across all sensors, optimizing their use via an SSA-specific figure-of-merit. ExoAnalytic was a key partner in refining the sensoroperatorinterfaces, working with Orbit Logic through specific details of sensortasking schedule delivery and theretum of observation data. Scant preparation on both sides preceded several integration exercises (walk-then-run style), which culminated in successfuldemonstrationofthe ability to supply optimized schedules for routine public catalog data collection -then adapt sensortasking schedules in real-time upon receipt of urgent data collection requests. This paper will provide a narrative of thejoint integration pro