NUMERICA CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF151-083

Description

ABSTRACT:There is a critical need to research and develop new ways to better determine what satellite orbital events are most critical to monitor and how such methods can be made scalable to serve the future needs of the operational system with a growing catalog of up to 500,000 objects. To support this endeavor, Numerica proposes the development of a new software suite for space object conjunction assessment. Numerica's multi-faceted approach would provide solutions from the sensor level to the system level that (i) generate improved orbital estimates and more realistic covariances directly from sensor observations; (ii) perform scalable all-on-all conjunction filtering to quickly and cheaply rule out infeasible conjunctions; (iii) compute a more accurate probability of collision acting on the most critical conjunction pairs; and (iv) display the highest risk conjunction events in a risk assessment visualization tool. Phase I will focus primarily on algorithm and software development and will exploit Numerica's existing mature software suite of astrodynamics algorithms. Numerica will also leverage its experience processing real and simulated data from the SSN. A transition plan for integrating the conjunction assessment software suite into an operationally relevant system will also be developed in Phase I.BENEFIT:The envisioned sensor-to-system-level conjunction assessment software suite would provide the analyst with advanced tools needed to support conjunction assessment screening on a growing space catalog and ultimately to serve the future needs of the SSA mission. In particular, Numerica's multi-faceted approach would (i) send more reliable input to downstream conjunction assessment algorithms; (ii) scale to a future catalog with as many as half-a-million objects; (iii) perform conjunction assessment screening out to seven days or longer and reduce the false alarm rate; and (iv) improve analyst productivity by displaying the output in a tool that would allow the analyst to more efficiently monitor the highest risk conjunction events and recommended courses of action. The primary transition path of the proposed conjunction assessment algorithms and software is to ARCADE and to an eventual service pack of the JSpOC Mission System. To facilitate this transition, Numerica is partnering with Intelligent Software Solutions (ISS) and will integrate the software into their Continuous Anomalous Orbital Situation Determination (CAOS-D) UDOP in an extended program. A secondary transition path would be to a commercial customer such as Lockheed Martin or AGI, both of whom are attempting to develop commercial versions of the JSpOC in order to complement and augment services currently provided by the Government. Another viable transition path is to AFSPC/A3Z for inclusion of the software into the Astrodynamics Standards Library. The primary transition path of the proposed conjunction assessment algorithms and software is to ARCADE and to an eventual service pack of the JSpOC Mission System. To facilitate this transition, Numerica is partnering with Intelligent Software Solutions (ISS) and will integrate the software into their Continuous Anomalous Orbital Situation Determination (CAOS-D) UDOP in an extended program. A secondary transition path would be to a commercial customer such as Lockheed Martin or AGI, both of whom are attempting to develop commercial versions of the JSpOC in order to complement and augment services currently provided by the Government. Another viable transition path is to AFSPC/A3Z for inclusion of the software into the Astrodynamics Standards Library.