XL SCIENTIFIC LLC — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: AFX20D-TCSO1

Description

The need to preserve mission objectives despite setbacks is paramount as space becomes more contested and more congested. Satellites must be resilient such that they can respond quickly to a changing environment and continue to provide services. A key requirement for this resilience is faster detection and recovery from faults, which in turn requires a change in how faults are monitored and corrected on the ground. As satellites proliferate and integrate into constellations, the operator workload required to monitor such large numbers of space assets becomes infeasible, further necessitating a reduction in monitoring demands. Verus Research will provide Sat-SAM (Satellite Software for Anomaly Monitoring), which builds from (1) satellite simulation software and artificial intelligence algorithms provided by teammate the University of Colorado Boulder and (2) satellite fault detection algorithms previously developed by Verus Research. Both technologies have been successfully demonstrated in other research programs (for the UAE Mars Mission and AFRL, respectively) and will therefore enable accurate and automated fault detection to reduce operator workload and increase spacecraft resilience. The simulated data and algorithms will be augmented with innovative data fusion and streamlining techniques to minimize required on orbit training data, which enables rapid deployment on new satellites.