Award

ABSTRACT: According to the U.S. National Space Policy, "The United States will invest in space situational awareness capabilities and launch vehicle technologies; develop the means to assure mission essential functions enabled by space; enhance our ability to identify and characterize threats; and deter, defend, and if necessary, defeat efforts to interfere with or attack U.S. or allied space systems." To identify and characterize threats, the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) must maintain custody of current space objects, as well as characterize and catalog new objects as they are launched.Large upcoming constellations of satellites planned by commercial entities make the pace of space population unprecedented.As multi-payload launches become the norm, robust tracking, correlation, cataloging and identification is more critical than ever.Without an automated system, valuable indications and warnings (I&W) cannot be issued to protect U.S. and allied assets from environment and adversary threats.There are multiple algorithms that correlate observations to ballistic objects.However, the ability to autonomously associate measurements across multiple days with maneuvering spacecraft is still an unsolved problem, let alone coupling this software with apriori information for I&W alerts.To meet this need, ExoAnalytic Solutions intends to develop C3PO:"Correlation and Characterization for Catalog Processing."; BENEFIT: ExoAnalytic's C3PO effort is significant because it will provide the ability to rapidly and autonomously correlate objects and provide I&W using commercial and SSN observations and Intelligence data on High-Interest Objects (HIO).ExoAnalytic intends to bring correlation of maneuvering spacecraft, initial orbit determination, and I&W alerts together in a single autonomous software suite.The benefit to the warfighter is giving a JSpOC user more information about potentially volitle space objects in a much more timely fashion than ever before.While the user may continue to perform analysis by hand prior to adding object to the catalog, the user will have access to more data about the object to begin their analysis.C3PO will alert the JMS operator by an appropriate number and severity of I&W messages to prevent user overload and high false alarm rates, allowing the user to prioritize and focus on threat concerns by likelihood and consequence.With the overwhelming amount of data that comes from the SSN and new non-traditional sources, algorithms that minimize manual human interaction will better support timely awareness and Course of Action (COA) decisions with regards to threats to critical space assets.The commercial application of C3PO is to integrate with the JSpOC Mission Systems (JMS) after successful demonstration within the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Advanced Research, Collaboration, and Application Development Environment (ARCADE).Aside from integrating C3PO into JMS, ExoAnalytic would anticipate this effort would open the door to opportunities to support JMS on Increment 3 activities.Additionally, this technology would also be useful to domestic and international commercial space owners and operators.While spacecraft operators usually have good awareness of their spacecraft during normal operations, anomalous activities (e.g., space weather event, debris collision, on-orbit failure) with their asset or neighboring spacecraft leave them with very poor space situational awareness.C3PO can also support customers that are part of a multi-payload launch, since early knowledge of nearby objects is typically minimal.