Dan Petrovich, RTX; Matt Sandnas, SEAKR Engineering; Jeff Pritchard, SEAKR Engineering; Elvis Silva, Blue Canyon Technologies; Ken Johnson, RTX; Sonny Tahiliani, Raytheon Ventures
Keywords: space based assets, MEO, HEO, GEO, Optical, High performance computing
Abstract:
Low Earth Orbit (LEO) space domain awareness (SDA) sensors are less resilient to attack and more prone to debris than previously assumed. GEO and Cislunar SDA architectures and capabilities are increasingly well understood and analyzed in published papers. The rise of Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) commercial and defense assets lends itself to hosted payload opportunities in a more resilient environment free from debris, further from ground-based threats, and more easily aware of space-based threats. We assess the life cycle costs vs. capabilities of MEO hosted SDA sensors for both commercial and defense assets. And provide a recommended EO SDA sensor architecture to deliver best value detect and track of non-star objects above and below a given MEO constellation. The ability to detect and track threats passing through the MEO region is explored and data storage, processing, and dissemination of object sighting messages explored in support of future MEO SDA architectures. Commercial SATCOM, GPS, Optical Crosslinks, and OPIR in MEO demands a commensurate increase in resilient, hosted space situational awareness. Specifically, we propose the re-purposing of On-Board Processing (OBP) used by commercial MEO communications systems to serve defense SDA instrument(s). Such OBP electronics feature low recurring cost due to rate production. We demonstrate that a bootstrapped commercial OBP approach greatly reduces the downlink data bandwidth in cost and latency competitive compared to downlinking raw sensor data. Furthermore, we show that crosslinked MEO assets strengthen the existing SDA architecture by enabling low latency cross-cueing to deliver increased track quality to the broader SDA architecture.
Date of Conference: September 19-22, 2023
Track: Space-Based Assets