Small Satellite System for Space Surveillance

The United States has enjoyed many asynchronous advantages from its dominance of the space domain. The ability to maintain a deep space catalog is a critical component of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) mission aiding safety of flight operations for hundreds of high-value satellites that support our national defense and the world economy. Monitoring the growing population of Resident Space Objects is a difficult surveillance challenge. The next commander of U.S. Strategic Command, General John Hyten, has called for the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL) to research alternative, more cost effective approaches to support SSA. The viability for space-based monitoring is well established (e.g. SBV, SBSS, Sapphire, etc.) This flight experiment will demonstrate viability of utilizing a low cost space sensor to supplement the SSN. Applied Defense Solutions and our team will build an advanced 30 cm SSA sensor (same size of SBSS) married with a mission operations concept for detecting and tracking objects near the geosynchronous belt with sensitivity to 16 Mv. Our vendor LinaSpaces telescope features a flight proven Emperix camera, ADS and Pacific Defense Solutions (PDS) are providing onboard processing algorithms and techniques with heritage from AFRL and SBSS, Blue Canyon provides interface engineering and testing.