Emma Kerr, Dstl
Keywords: Space Domain Awareness, Requirements, Government, Policy, System of Systems
Abstract:
The UK has both civil and military agencies dedicated to Space, including Space Domain Awareness (SDA) and the UK government has directed these agencies to coordinate activities, in order to get best value for the UK people. The UK strives to be a responsible and safe space actor, in order to do this effectively it was decided to develop a framework of requirements for Space Domain Awareness that could be used to support procurement, research and development and policy decision making. The UK’s first set of Space Domain Awareness Requirements were developed as a cross-government initiative, pulling in experience and knowledge from both civil and military agencies. At AMOS 2023, these requirements were presented for the first time. This paper will provide an update, discussing the progress made in the past year, describing how the requirements have been used to underpin and support ongoing and new government initiatives, programs and projects, and the future for the requirements.
The Requirements were developed to inform the development of a system of systems, including the entire SDA chain from sensors and data processing through to readouts for policy makers. This system of systems approach means that eventually the Requirements can be used to underpin every piece of research, every procurement and every policy decision made by UK agencies for SDA.
The Requirements were initiated under a UK Space Agency (UKSA) study, but have since expanded to include requirements such as space object characterization, which sit outside SST but within the wider SDA envelope. In the year since these were last presented publicly, further development has been done to expand and refine the requirement set and make them more robust. Finally, and most critically the second revision sets out key priorities within the requirement set. This second iteration has now been endorsed by the original signatories UK Space Agency and UK Space Command, but additionally by Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl), the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), and the UK Meteorological Office (Met Office). These additional signatories signal a step forward in UK government collaboration in SDA.
The second endorsement is not the end of the road, development of the Requirements is ongoing with significant work planned to expand their scope and utility. It is envisaged that the Requirements will remain as a living document, to be revised on an annual basis. Currently, the requirements are heavily skewed towards the space segment, with some cross-over into ground and link segment, however work is ongoing to cover these areas more effectively, along with expanding the current requirements on Space Command and Control (C2).
The requirements are split into; User, System and Data Requirements. The Requirements are mapped with forward and backward traceability, such that every system and data requirement can be traced back to a user requirement and a user can see every system and data requirement that derives from each user requirement. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the information contained in the Requirements some information has been redacted from the publicly available version.
The Requirements are being currently being used across UK government to underpin ongoing and future procurements. By performing gap analyses comparing currently available technologies and solutions against the requirements, a foundation for future research and development planning has be formed. Furthermore, they can also be used by UK and overseas industry and academia as signposts for the future SDA needs of UK agencies.
Date of Conference: September 17-20, 2024
Track: Space Domain Awareness