NUMERICA CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF161-059

NUMERICA CORPORATION — SBIR Phase II award from Department of Defense.

Amount
$1,499,812
Agency
Department of Defense · Air Force
Program / Phase
SBIR · Phase II
Topic
AF161-059
Solicitation
16.1
NAICS
Place of performance
CO
Period
2020-09-01 → 2022-09-01

Description

The current U.S. Space Surveillance Network primarily tracks high altitude resident space objects (RSOs) through a small set of large-aperture optical telescopes. While these systems are very capable, they are costly to maintain, and they do not provide persistent coverage of RSOs in or near geostationary Earth orbit (GEO). The Super-synchronous Small Satellite Space Surveillance System (S6) being championed by AFRL provides an excellent platform to test and analyze the effectiveness of a joint ground/space GEO monitoring architecture to include automated change detection. The pilot program will launch one satellite into super-synchronous orbit where it will persistently monitor RSOs in neighboring sections of the GEO belt. Numerica would support this program by (i) refining the concept of operations; (ii) providing a tasking capability; (iii) providing a payload data processing capability; and (iv) supporting integration and verification and validation activities.