TAU TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF162-005

Description

The United States relies heavily on force multiplying, space-based navigation, communications, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites. Military space programs have begun a paradigm shift, from small constellations of large spacecraft, to large constellations of small spacecraft. These large constellations will require complex support requirements for the ground station network and satellite operations resources. Until recently, most satellite programs were controlled via contractor proprietary, unique ground control systems having one-of-a-kind user interface systems. Telemetry and command displays were different for each spacecraft system, requiring time-consuming and expensive training for space operations crews, and ineffective tabular data displays. Spacecraft designed three decades ago typically had several hundred telemetry points, all with unique names (mnemonics) that had to be learned by crew personnel. Modern spacecraft designs, incorporating new technologies, can easily have several thousand telemetry points. This incredible increase in information available to crew members presents significant challenges for crew training, and effective use of this data by space operations crew members. Tau Technologies has conceived a new telemetry and command user interface system that exploits commonalities in spacecraft design, new information systems technologies and in-house space operations and software engineering expertise to provide an intuitive, user-definable satellite telemetry display system.