Space Domain Awareness
Space Domain Awareness (SDA) is the mission to detect, track, characterize, and classify resident space objects around the Earth to ensure safe and responsible space operations for all. Access to space is proliferating for countries and industry. This proliferation is leading to greater congestion and contests in the space environment. As nations acting in hostile or uncooperative fashions are developing effects and capabilities to dominate outer space, the US has expanded its position and now considers space a domain of warfare, like air, sea, or land. The United States Space Force (USSF) has SDA as one of its core competencies to ensure outer space is a domain with free action and common utility. Enhancing SDA capabilities is a benefit for all. NSI partners and collaborates with government organizations, industry, FFRDCs, and other academic institutions to enhance SDA capabilities. The SDA research at NSI is multidisciplinary and therefore includes collaboration across CU Boulder’s campus with many academic departments.
Missions: Space and counterspace operations; defeat and deter space operational surprise; space traffic management; uncooperative space launches; defeat and deter anti-satellite engagements; Cis-lunar and XDA.
Challenges: Event and target perception; Event prediction; anomaly detection; disparate information fusion; persistent monitoring; optimal asset tasking; human factors for space operators; space environment; information resiliency; data proliferation.
CU Strengths: Astrodynamics; sensor tasking; mission and constellation autonomy; dim target detection; target tracking and state estimation; target characterization and typing; Guidance, navigation, and control (GNC); Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT); space weather. ·