Jeffrey Asher, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory; Douglas Cool, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory; Diego Cavero, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory; Joshua Sloane, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory; Kelly Brinkley, JHU Applied Physics Laboratory; Anthony Rosati, United States Air Force, USSF/SMC/SPGZ; Hillary Keltner, United States Air Force, USSF/SMC/SPGZ
Keywords: Tactical Track, Volume Revisit, GEO, SDA, GEO SDA, Hosted Payloads, MS&A, SSN, EO,
Abstract:
Space Domain Awareness (SDA) is composed of multiple functional areas to provide a variety of information regarding known space objects, discovery of new objects, and the overall space environment. To meet the needs of these functional areas, the space surveillance network is primarily composed of ground-based optical sensors, ground-based radars, and space-based optical sensors. Space-based optical sensors have been leveraged previously for timely revisit of geosynchronous orbit (GEO) and tracking of GEO resident space objects. As a result some electro-optical sensors have been designed to be capable of both object-based tasking to perform tactical track, and volume-based tasking to perform rapid volume revisit. Although some sensor systems are capable of meeting search requirements and track requirements independently, it is unclear how search capability decreases as sensors are tasked to track more objects. In order to preserve timely search capability during periods of high track need, the United States Space Force (USSF) is interested in acquiring low cost hostable search sensors for GEO SDA.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), in support of the USSF’s Space and Missile Systems Center Space Domain Awareness Division Space-Based Electro-Optical Branch (SMC/SPGZ), has developed a tool for assessing volume revisit and tactical track capacity in conjunction. The JHU/APL Chimera tool provides a geometric assessment of sensor access vs GEO longitude and local time of day, in order to better quantify the benefits of low cost augmenting sensors, commercial hosted payloads, and sensors from proposed international partnerships. Chimera is currently being used to inform ongoing SDA architecture design trades and assess individual sensor contributions to the overall GEO SDA architecture.
This effort leverages this existing tool to investigate the relationship between volume revisit capability and tactical track loading for a notional space-based architecture of dual-use optical sensors. Volume revisit performance is presented in common industry metrics, such as max violation, total violation time, and rapid revisit interval, for a variety of track loads. Preliminary results show that volume revisit performance decreases non-linearly with increasing track loading. This work presents this relationship between volume revisit and track performance for a variety of stand-alone and augmented sensor architectures, highlighting the ability of hosted search sensors’ to provide persistent discovery and triage of new objects. This effort will determine critical track loading thresholds that lead to large inflections in volume revisit performance.
Date of Conference: September 14-17, 2021
Track: Dynamic Tasking