- Thank you for taking the time today to join us.
On behalf of my colleagues, Beth Blakney, Jayson Lee,
Sean O'Neill and Marilyn Ross,
I'll be presenting our efforts
at preserving the space domain here at MITRE.
Space is without structures or rules.
And in the absence of coordinated control,
the basic premise of space traffic management is do regard.
That as each operator is accountable
for their own safety and the safety of others.
The real danger to the space domain comes
because of that lack of structure,
which translates into a lack of risk management
for the space environment itself.
Each operator is making their own decisions
and that could become the wild wild west.
The answer is providing just enough structure
to make the individual self-interest of the operator
who's trying to manage their operation safely
synonymous with preserving the space domain.
We think of collaborative decision-making
where operators still make their own individual decisions,
but they're aware across the entire operation
of what others are doing.
And those actions are coordinated with a shared picture.
The structure starts in planning where users share decisions
and support tools to understand
the constraints of their operation.
Preserving the space domain is about ensuring
the regions of space don't experience
cascading debris events,
and that the spectrum is not so crowded
as to degrade the performance of planned communications.
That relies on the insights the operators can receive
when making their decisions
and insights they gain from coordination with others.
It also requires the coordination of space resources
to be fair and impartial enough to avoid contention.
The link is a set of positive behaviors
that tie the individual risk management
to the effects that it has on others.
So how does space traffic management
provide that minimum structure
to connect the operators' decisions
to the management of the space domain risks?
It begins in the planning and analytical views
to understand the risks a new operation
poses to those already in operations
and to other planned operations
that are still in development.
It expands into operational views
that look at the interactions between operators
as they make routine decisions to maneuver
or change their operation.
And it has applications that add value
from space traffic coordinators to help
with the assurance of the mission
and connecting those actions to the health
of the space domain itself.
What type of decisions do we envision at each level?
Well, for planning, which happens long in advance
and involves equity issues between multiple parties,
the coordination has to be centralized
because of those equity issues.
For operations, it's more on the hours and days schedule
where pairwise, operators can understand their interactions
and negotiate the settlement.
Finally, in runtime decisions,
the time is so short that the operators
can't provide useful human input.
The speed of the decisions is between computers,
machine to machine.
The equity decisions that are made in planning
need global arbitration.
Planning of orbits and spectrum allocation
will involve multi party deliberations
based on the knowledge of the existing
and planned satellites and the existing
and planned spectrum use.
And not have to operate according to some norms
about how those equity decisions are made.
Operational decisions are working out the actions
of two parties that are going to have
some level of interaction with each other
for whatever reason.
From maneuvers, space traffic management
or space traffic coordinators can provide knowledge
on the objects of concern.
If there's a decision to be made about debris remediation,
this can be part of the information
shared by those organizations concerning weight of debris
or the risks from large debris objects that might break up.
Repair and decommissioning decisions can be made
based on the knowledge of how difficult it will be
to deorbit, move to the graveyard,
or get a proximity or a rendezvous operation in place
to repair the vehicle.
Runtime decisions as we've said before
are machine to machine,
they could be about collision avoidance,
some are suggested decisions to manage spectrum
in close proximity to others.
And of course, proximity and rendezvous operations
also require tight coordination.
Looking at those decisions,
we worked with internal subject matter experts
and individuals from industry
to come up with a set of risks that affect
the operators' mission assurance
and the space domain health.
By looking at the risks and prioritizing them,
we concluded with industry,
that awareness and information, governance and debris
blocks the space with the three biggest categories
and focused on those areas.
We began to build line of sight risk models
that connect these risks with the behaviors
or outcomes that we hope to achieve as a community
to preserve the space domain.
This example shows how the presence of lethal debris
and the increase of missions will combine
to increase the importance of shared awareness.
That awareness is critical to planning orbits,
deciding on debris remediation,
and deciding the importance of onboard avoidance algorithms.
In the trace, we see how the risks of inaccurate
or incomplete information
could negate that shared awareness.
So we add norms for equitable coordination
to address those gaps.
And finally, the risk of mass debris generation
from a collision or inconsistent enforcement actions
must be countered by tight operating channel decision-making
and possibly even runtime onboard collision avoidance
so that when an encounter without coordination is made,
the system remains safe.
When we started the workshops,
we thought the focus would be on the actual collaboration.
So we built an emulator that could be used
in planning an operational decision-making
to visualize the collaboration and value of information.
As we did the deeper dive into the risk
and started to identify the variety of risks that exist,
we shifted our focus.
The models for coordination could come back into play
as we move into the solution space and begin to evaluate.
Another model would be necessary
to evaluate runtime collaboration.
So in conclusion, we've developed with industry
a set of risks affecting mission assurance,
which could also impact the safety
and health of the space domain.
We've mapped those risks to behaviors and outcomes
and the decisions that will be necessary
to mitigate the risks.
By linking these decisions and information
into the operations of individual operators,
we hope to incentivize the behaviors
that would preserve the space domain.
The next steps are to refine those models
and translate those behaviors into policies and norms
that would assure spaces' preservation.
Thank you for your attention and your participation today.