STELLAR SCIENCE LTD. CO. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: ABSTRACT: Air Force ground based observatory telescope systems leverage a wide variety of

Description

ABSTRACT: Air Force ground based observatory telescope systems leverage a wide variety of sensor capabilities to observe satellites in support of U.S. Space Situational Awareness (SSA) missions, and these valuable sensor resources face many competing requirements for mount time. However, existing astronomical schedulers do not account for variability of space object brightness or numerous other factors important to space operators, experimentalists, site managers, intelligence analysts, and other users. Stellar Science proposes the Integrated Space Imagery Scheduler (ISIS), an application that will be built upon existing government-off-the-shelf (GOTS) software, that will go beyond just satisfying the requirements of improving collection efficiency, producing weekly/monthly/6-month schedules, and designing an automated methodology to understand satellite radiometry, site-specific parameters, satellite orbital uncertainties and atmospheric turbulence. ISIS will deliver a scheduling capability built upon a pluggable framework that takes the innovative approach of providing different scheduling perspectives for different types of tool operators. Schedule generation paths will be customizable with graphical manipulation of decision factors and algorithms. The ISIS extensible architecture will allow third parties to rapidly add decision factors and alternative algorithms in the future, provide automated schedules of any duration, and enable operators to simulate imagery for scheduled collections. BENEFIT: An automated rapid mission planning framework with an extensible architecture will be of continued value to both the Research and Development (R & D) and operational communities. As government personnel resources dwindle and manpower becomes scarcer, a flexible tool that provides automated schedules answers the immediate operational need of improving collection efficiency while minimizing the need for human interaction. However, Space Situational Awareness (SSA) will continue to be a highly researched field, and the scientific community continues to clamor to better understand existing collection phenomenology and develop new sensors. The Integrated Space Imagery Scheduler (ISIS) is an expandable tool that will ensure future capabilities can be easily utilized by incorporating new decision factors and algorithms into the existing collection process. This framework will provide a shared government framework for new and exciting R & D in scheduling, machine learning, mission planning, data mining, and sensor development. ISIS will have many potential opportunities to expand its user base and benefits. ISIS"innovative approach of providing role-based perspectives to users provides value to communities not traditionally associated with sensor scheduling. A tool that can provide understanding of future collection opportunities before they are actually scheduled will be a tremendous resource savings within the intelligence and military communities. ISIS also can be expanded to benefit other observation sites. The current Space Surveillance Network (SSN) operated by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) consists of a worldwide network of 30 space surveillance sensors. As the tool is matured for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), opportunities exists for ISIS to be extended to support other SSN sites and non-traditional SSA contributors in private and commercial sector locations.