Cameron Harris, EO Solutions; Miguel Rodriguez, AFRL; Virginia Wright, AFRL; Jonathan Kadan, Space Systems Command; Justin Fletcher, Space Systems Command
Keywords: Space Domain Awareness, Testing and Evaluation, System Performance, Benchmark Data
Abstract:
End-to-end system Testing and Evaluation (T&E) is needed to assess and enhance autonomous space domain awareness (SDA) systems. This article presents an test environment for end-to-end evaluation of autonomous SDA sensor orchestration systems. The test environment wraps a system under test and plays through scenarios that are relevant to current SDA challenges, such as adversarial threat response evaluation, validation of expected day-in-the-life behavior, and other sensor orchestration performance analysis. An initial application of the methodology is demonstrated in guiding feature development for an operational sensor orchestration system called MACHINA. In a direct-ascent anti-satellite threat scenario, the T&E approach validated MACHINA’s reactive sensor tasking and identified work areas in mission planning components for its prospective ballistic object tracking capability. These diagnostic findings show the utility of end-to-end T&E in strategically improving and hardening operational systems. Overall, the results demonstrate that the proposed test environment, instrumented with insightful and intentional analytics, provides a framework to reason about and accelerate development of complex SDA systems prior to real-world deployment.
Date of Conference: September 16-19, 2025
Track: Space Domain Awareness