Robert Wolff, Office of Space Commerce; Christian Ramos, USSF Commercial Integration Office/Mission Delta 2; Jeff Cornelius, Parsons; Quentin Collins, Office of Space Commerce – contractor
Keywords: TraCSS, Space Traffic Coordination, Space Traffic Management, CA, Conjunction, Conjunction Assessment, Collision, Avoidance
Abstract:
On September 30, 2024, the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), developed by the Office of Space Commerce (OSC), began providing provisional space flight safety services to a select group of beta users from a spectrum of satellite owner / operators. The purpose of TraCSS is to provide space situational awareness and space traffic coordination services to the commercial and civil community and thus migrate the services currently being provided by the US Space Force (USSF) to OSC. This paper will examine the current capabilities and products being delivered by the USSF to the commercial and civil community, provide the status of the migration of those services to TraCSS, and examine capabilities OSC plans to enhance safety for the civil space flight community. This paper will only cover features anticipated to be included in the first operational release of the TraCSS system and will not cover any anticipated features for future releases. The goal is to provide the information that owner / operators will need to gain confidence in the usefulness, and accuracy of the TraCSS system along with providing an overview of how to interact with TraCSS.
In preparation for the migration of satellite owner / operators from space-track.org to tracss.gov, the TraCSS user portal, OSC has conducted numerous side-by-side comparison tests with the existing system operated by USSF’s Mission Delta 2 (MD2) to verify the quality of the conjunction analysis results produced by TraCSS. The tests show that TraCSS has been found to be operationally equivalent to the MD2 system. The paper will explain differences in the Concept of Operations (CONOPS) between the two systems and discuss how those differences result in slight variations in system outputs. The paper will also illustrate why those differences have no negative impact to the safety mission. Instead, the increased screening capabilities of TraCSS should provide substantial benefit to spaceflight safety.
The comparison tests examined Conjunction Data Messages (CDMs) produced by both systems to compare metrics of interest including probability of collision, time of closest approach, miss distance, and number of CDMs in each orbit regime. The paper will show how varying orbit regime, screening time, recency of atmospheric model updates, and other factors will affect the comparison of these metrics for both systems.
Finally, the paper will discuss the differences in usage between TraCSS and the existing MD2 system to provide satellite owner operators with expectations for migration to the TraCSS system. Discussion topics include the TraCSS specifications of CDMs and the Orbit Comprehensive Message (OCM), how users will be able to interact with TraCSS, and new capabilities, such as increased screening frequency, on-demand screening requests. We will examine each of the additional new capabilities and provide recommended usage for each of them.
With the new features and capabilities provided by TraCSS, OSC anticipates improving spaceflight safety for the community as a whole and reducing workload for satellite owner / operators as TraCSS continues to receive upgrades and on-board new services. These new features and capabilities will be especially vital in a space environment with increasing numbers of highly maneuverable and non-cooperative satellites.
Date of Conference: September 16-19, 2025
Track: Conjunction/RPO