Keith Morris (Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company), Chris Rice (Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company), Eugene Little (Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company)
Keywords: Space Situational Awareness, Space Based Assets, Orbital Debris
Abstract:
With declining government budgets, new architecture approaches are being studied to determine the most cost effective GEO Space Situational Awareness architectures. Looking at four different architecture concepts utilizing CubeSats, Microsats, Hosted Payload Sensors, and larger satellites, highlights the benefits and regrets of each class of spacecraft that helps support upgrades to the current space surveillance network. CubeSats have been shown in previous studies to provide GEO SSA mission value while maintaining affordability. However, there are limitations such as mission assurance that will increase the costs over time. Microsats provide higher quality SSA with less restrictions, but the rideshare options to GEO become fewer. Hosted Payload sensors on future GEO spacecraft can provide affordable access to space but are constrained by the host orbit. Larger satellites can provide exquisite SSA information but are more expensive individually and require dedicated launches. To credibly compare costs, the analysis is based on launch, spacecraft, ground and operations, spacecraft replenishment based on expected mission life, and integration costs over the life of the architecture. Performance is based on observations of all GEO objects with evaluation on percentage of time with access to each object, and the revisit times to each object. The results show the CubeSat architecture can provide good performance for access and percentages with a low initial investment but require increased costs over time to cover the lower mission assurance. Hosted payloads suffer performance due to limited GEO locations but at an affordable cost. Microsats provide a balance between performance and cost but have lower revisit rates due to fewer spacecraft in orbit. The larger satellites provide high performance but require higher costs mostly due to the dedicated launches. All of these architectures have benefits and regrets that help to highlight where future investments are needed. This paper describes each of the architectures with analysis results through cost versus performance curves that highlight the benefits and drawbacks. The optimal architecture may involve more than one class of spacecraft to strike a balance between cost and performance.
Date of Conference: September 9-12, 2014
Track: Poster