1. THE ROLE OF COMMERCIAL SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS (SSA) IN REDUCING ON-ORBIT RISK
Dr. Mark A. Skinner
The Boeing Company
4411 The 25 Way NE, Ste. 350
Albuquerque NM USA
3rd Annual Space Traffic Management Conference “Emerging Dynamics”
ERAU Daytona Beach FL, November 2016

2. Rosetta Stone for SSA elements
Space Situational Awareness
‘Space Domain Awareness’
National Security/Military aspects
Space Surveillance & Tracking
“Intent”
Characterization
Catalog
Command & Control
Positions/“metrics”
Conjunction Assessment
/COLA
Launch
ADR or JCA
Space Weather?
Sub-orbital
De-orbit
Space Traffic Management
Military
Civil

3. Commercial Space Situational Awareness for Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) operators?
Enabled via a network of small commercial-off-the-shelf sensors (telescopes + digital cameras) to observe space objects and accurately measure their positions and movement at a very low cost
Typical activities:
Positional monitoring
Right Ascension & Declination via absolute stellar reference system of space objects -> accurate orbit determination
Conjunction assessment of detected debris, drifters, cluster neighbors, rocket bodies, etc.
Anomaly Resolution
Regulatory Compliance
Command Verification
Change Detection
Geographic Location of jamming sources
Boeing’s SSA support to US Air Force provides necessary heritage & experience

4. Demonstrated measurement accuracy key to reducing on-orbit risk
Optical telescope measurements give more accurate positions than 2-station radio frequency (RF) ranging; ~30 meters uncertainty in position
State-of-the-art measurements & processing offer prediction uncertainties not exceeding a few 100 meters after 3 days. Useful predictions out to 7-10 days into the future.

5. Conclusion
Commercial space situational awareness offers information that previously was only available from government SSA entities
Commercial space object monitoring can produce positional and velocity measurements superior to current state-of-the-art RF techniques
Measurement uncertainty ~30 m, ~size of a GEO satellite
Detection down to ~1 m2 object size at GEO
This capability reduces Operator risk in three areas:
Longitude bias removal for safer satellite cluster operations
Improved conjunction avoidance (COLA) between space objects
Improved dual-satellite geographic-location of jamming sources
Boeing currently providing these services to external & internal Customers for improved safety-of-flight and cost reduction
Accurate space object positional information, now available commercially, can reduce risk for on-orbit operations