Sensor Network for Global Monitoring of Spacecraft Situational Awareness

摘要

The continued proliferation of new technologies, operators, and capabilities in the space domain has created a challenge in providing space situational awareness (SSA) intelligence and services. Specifically, the evolution of small satellite technologies over the last ten years from conceptual demonstrations to operational mega constellations has dramatically increased the complexity of the SSA mission. 2018 alone saw more than 100 successful launches with 450+ known payloads deployed, including over 60 payloads on the December 2018 SSO A mission. Launches in 2019, and beyond, are expected to exceed these numbers as multiple commercial "mega constellations" come online and become operational. New capabilities and approaches to space surveillance must be employed to not only handle the increasing volume of space based objects, but to also provide timely and accurate intelligence to stakeholders. Raytheon proposes to use a variety of low cost, geographically dispersed, ground based sensors and commercial ground networks to augment the Space Surveillance Network (SSN). Leveraging the efficiencies and capabilities of low cost sensor hardware combined with near global data networking options, the SSN can provide broader monitoring services of the space domain, better prioritization tasking of larger assets, and more data backed intelligence of the space operational picture. To help address this problem, Raytheon proposes a low cost sensor network that employs scalable, distributed architectures along with cloud services to monitor space based phenomena. This concept considers the use of edge processing devices to process data at the sensor and reduce network burden across many disperse geographic locations. Network connectivity from a site location can also allow the system to move raw sensor data back to centralized cloud storage for more advanced processing into concise intelligence data products for analyst and operator consumption. Edge devices can be further leverag