TURION SPACE CORP — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: AF21S-TCSO1
TURION SPACE CORP — STTR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
Phase I STTR feasibility signal
- Phase I awards fund proof-of-concept work. For capture teams, they mark early interest from Department of Defense in a technical approach.
- Watch for Phase II follow-ons from the same firm/topic family — that conversion path is where budgets and transition pressure rise.
- Obligated amount $249,979. Cross-check similar awards in the same agency and technology tags for going-rate context.
- Topic code AF21S-TCSO1 links this award to a solicitation family — search the same topic stem for incumbents and recompete timing.
- Amount
- $249,979
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Air Force
- Program / Phase
- STTR · Phase I
- Topic
- AF21S-TCSO1
- Solicitation
- X21.S
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- CA
- Period
- 2022-08-09 → 2023-01-10
Description
The growing interest in on-orbit servicing and active debris removal drives the need for cost-effective and robust space systems capable of performing autonomous proximity operations. During these missions, relative pose estimates between non-cooperative agents are required for reliable autonomous navigation. Current state-of-the-art solutions rely on cooperative targets engaged in active telemetry sharing or are limited to GPS-bounding them to low-earth-orbit. To address this issue, the University of Texas at Austin (UT-A) has developed and flight demonstrated a SWAP-C minimized visual sensor package utilizing a convolution neural network. This on-orbit mission demonstrated autonomous proximity operations only using edge-computing and optical sensors of the chaser spacecraft. Turion Space Corp (TSC) and UT-A propose a Phase I STTR to conduct research with the Department of Defense to assess the feasibility of adapting this technology for commercialization. During this research study, TSC and UT-A will identify defense needs and evaluate the feasibility using existing systems-based engineering models of the solution. The results of this study will enable solution adaptation, prototyping, and demonstration during Phase II.