The Science: Business Areas
Space Situational Awareness
The space situational awareness (SSA) mission encompasses intelligence, reconnaissance of all space objects, and the prediction of space events, threats and activities. To paint an accurate and tactical picture of what is happening in space, SSA requires knowledge of the trajectory (orbit) and type (active or decommissioned satellite, debris, etc.) for all objects in the space environment. In addition, a significant amount of raw data must be collected to monitor the current activities, capabilities and expected future actions of objects that are under active control.
SSA surveillance or reconnaissance is focused on the detection of space objects, and the use of multi-source data (including available radar and electro-optical (EO) data) to track and identify the objects. But observation data is sparse for space surveillance, so the SSA mission is challenged to track objects in a data-starved environment.
Given the expected increase in the number of objects orbiting the Earth – due to improved sensors or debris-causing events such as the Chinese ASAT test or the Iridium-Kosmos collision – an automated system is needed for improved space surveillance.
Numerica is developing a new Multi-Hypothesis Tracking (MHT) algorithm, nonlinear filtering methods, and information-fusion algorithms that specifically address the challenges unique to space surveillance, including sparse data. Numerica’s approach provides robust tracking of space surveillance objects, anomaly and maneuver detection, conjunction analysis, and improved sensor resource management.