Maneuvering into the future: Open-Architecture Data Repository (OADR) prototype: Towards civil and commercial space traffic coordination

Abstract

In 2018, the US National Space Council released Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3), which instructed relevant US government agencies to begin re-assigning many aspects of space traffic management (STM) and space traffic coordination (STC) serving non-military US space operators. This was identified as a ‘whole of government’ approach, and the organization identified to lead many of the efforts was the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Space Commerce (OSC), in the US Department of Commerce (DOC). The US Congress, in Public Law 116–93, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, legislation directed that the Secretary of Commerce contract with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to study the Trump Administration's proposal. The NAPA study affirmed OSC would be best suited. Congress also mandated that OSC accomplish an important first step: assemble an Open Architecture Data Repository¹ (OADR) prototype to demonstrate the efficacy of the approach and architecture.

OSC, along with The Aerospace Corporation, MITER, MIT Lincoln Laboratories and the University of Texas-Austin, architected and assembled a working prototype in 2021. The team obtained two-months of data from the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN), along with data from commercial space surveillance data providers and satellite operator ephemerides. Using the prototype, the authors analyzed the data, identified potential satellite conjunctions, calculated probabilities of collision, and generated Conjunction Data Messages (CDMs). The team compared the results to existing operational systems, with good agreement. OSC and their partners demonstrated the OADR prototype results to the Congress, as funded and directed by Public Law 116–260, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. This paper describes some of the background and rationale for the prototype, goals and derived requirements of the prototype, the architecture, software deployed, data utilized, conjunction analysis results, comparison of the prototype's results with existing operational US government systems, and possible next steps for the OADR.