- Hello and welcome to the Charting Complex,
Dynamic and Extra-orbital Space Operations presentation.
I along with my fellow co-authors
Andy Anderegg and Sean O'Neil
are going to present a few ideas
towards enabling the free trade of space.
And before we get started,
we do wanna take a minute and just think AIAA
for the opportunity to present these ideas.
This will not come as a surprise,
but space has been changing.
The environment is changing,
the operations and technology
that exist in this environment is changing.
And as a result,
the space catalog that supports these new missions
really needs an upgrade and some changing.
Commercial space sustainability
will rely on the nature itself of this new space catalog.
It needs to be more than just a registry of space objects.
Characterization of those objects,
the environment by which they operate,
distributed decision-making and discoverable timelines
will all contribute towards this free trade of space
and free movement in space.
There may be new opportunities that arise,
expanded services to enable these new constructs.
And in this paper, we explore the details
of this proposed dynamic space catalog.
I alluded to a changing environment.
Commercial constellations plan to increase objects on orbit,
pushing commercial operations to over 90% of the activities.
This is a big statement.
The industry that is driving up
the need for more operations in space,
need ways to exchange information
and to work through these events
sometimes in near real time fashion.
New mission change assumptions
and the paradigms and the needs
for the space catalog itself.
There are new companies that need to be a part
of the space catalog.
There are new maneuvering objects that are not characterized
by orbits themselves,
that need to be a part of the space catalog.
And there's an increase to the tempo
of which we exchange this information.
We contend that some of these interfaces that have been
people to people interfaces,
will have to move towards machine to machine interfaces,
and are enabled by new technologies
that are emerging.
The commercial operators they're gonna require
delicate international negotiations to do so,
and greater global cooperation.
It's gonna take a lot of partnership across the industry
to keep up with this change to environment.
A dynamic catalog is a solution,
but it will need expanded content.
Greater knowledge of all space activities
will be needed to facilitate
direct collaborative decision-making between operators.
The layers of information required to do this
may not all need to be captured
in this dynamic space catalog.
However, will need to be captured and provided
at the just-in-time moment.
Physics will always remain,
and the knowledge of the environment and the mission
and safety factors will remain the same.
However, the types of operations, the types of fidelity,
or higher fidelity information required
for these new types of operations
in the sources of uncertainty will arise.
And this needs to be captured
as part of that dynamic space catalog
as the basis for enabling safety of mission
during these events.
Defining the intent coordination language
for space operators will be equally as important.
We will be able to preplan
some of these bigger events.
Sometimes crossing orbits,
sometimes traversing each other just in time.
And understanding what the language is
to drive those types of actions and behaviors,
and being consistent to one another in a global environment
is going to be key towards a long-term solution,
enabling free trade of space.
The monitoring of missions and objects,
that's something we do today.
Lots of surveillance in the monitoring of those events,
but we contend that we don't need to do all that monitoring
for everyone, for every event.
When an event comes close,
we know the players that need to interact.
They can then become their own decision makers
for what data actually needs to be passed
to one another to get through the event itself.
And then last,
the knowledge of vehicles and mission parameters will be key
to this discoverable knowledge set.
Understanding how to dynamically register
your space mission, or your space object,
that you are accountable and responsible for
or to how to get in touch with each other,
once items and objects and risks are imposed
in the space environment is going to be key
to this mission going forward.
So the technical knowledge of the object itself,
and the legal and ownership information for those objects
equally important to the physics and the environment
by which we move through our new missions.
This dynamic catalog of new information
will have to be captured with time views
over the course of space operations.
There really will be differing timescales
for the types of events that we're planning towards,
or planning through and executing in the future.
This goes from future month planning.
where we have known on tourism
actually planned and scheduled.
All the way through going back in time post event,
and looking for the reconstruction and analysis
towards maybe bettering how we exchange information
or the type of information going forward
as a community of interest.
A dynamic catalog would really span between these two
or three timescales,
but it really would provide that real-time understanding
that affects one another's actions
on each other's operations.
And so going through the timescale,
if you've planned well out in advance,
you may know some of the industry partners
that you need to work with to get through a planned event
that is happening months out.
But as that time window actually shrinks,
the fidelity of the information increases
and the crowdsource knowledge of that space environment,
also gives you a much more information to start executing
against a series of actions in coordination with others
in that particular space environment
that you need to coordinate with.
And then of course that window continues to shrink.
And now you're near real time.
And one would say that maybe,
some of these interfaces won't be people to people
in the future.
And yet machine to machine,
the technology is increasing
and available for space entities and happening.
And so the coordination of debris avoidance maneuvering,
autonomous actions, et cetera,
those timelines are now shrinking.
And therefore the data that needs to be passed
must be known up front.
Post event. We will do the reconstruction for an analysis
of what happened.
This will lead to lessons learned,
to update those actions and behaviors as mentioned before,
and we'll see an example of that in a future slide.
But also for attribution.
Should there be any issues
to understand how we work with one another going forward.
Sustainability really does rely on those actions
and behaviors that we walked through in the previous slide.
And to do this,
we really need to work together and commit across industry
towards building a playbook of norms and practices
to compliment the dynamic catalog.
This is a notional playbook.
But the playbook might have course of action
and operator decisions, pre coordinated and plan
to drive the types of information
that we're going to need to pass to one another,
and how we might pass that and what timeline.
It might drive new business,
internal risk tolerances to change.
There may be information that was held within
industry firewalls that might need to be shared
not necessarily through the playbook itself or the catalog,
but with one another during an event
where you're negotiating.
And again, we'll see an example of that on the next slide.
We have a list here,
not meant to be an exhaustive list of routine actions
or plays that could be considered.
And in the paper we explore some of these.
But it really is going to take industry coming together
to collaborate and form this playbook for space operations,
to practice and be prepared for events
where we need to in a very hyper-focused
timescale and environment,
understand who we need to interact with and how.
And this is a global challenge.
There may be a needs to normalize on language
where there are language barriers.
And so a lot of this work really happening upfront
will enable risk tolerance for companies
as well as drive down risk for companies
towards free trade of space going forward.
Here's an example where during a near real-time event,
you have an operator that's starting to take action
and an affected operator coordinating.
It's a person to person interaction,
but it could be machine to machine or machine to person
in the future.
The operator taking action is coordinating
with the effected operator by saying,
"Hey, I'm letting you know,
"I'm now taking action. I'm passing through your orbit,
"but I need you to share information with me
"at the highest fidelity so that we could coordinate this
"and make sure that the event is safe."
And so the effected operator is now discovering
new information in real, near real time
from the operator taking action.
This is not actually coming from the space catalog,
and they're asking each other questions.
"What is your heading and speed?"
"Can you share your ephemeris?"
"What propulsion are using?"
"When might you have a better predicted a number
"of available information?"
"Is it 45 minutes out?"
"Is it 15 minutes out?"
"How are we going to interact through this,"
is really what they're asking.
And then from there, "what's your tolerance level?"
"What is your company allowing you
"as far as actions to be taken?"
"What are government entities allowing both effected parties
"to take as acceptable action going forward?"
"So how much error?"
"What's the maximum delay?"
And you're seeing here even do you have leeway
in the time that you're passing.
This is all pertinent information to enable this exchange
to get through a space event.
And this might happen numerous times in an hour
across the world.
It will have to be scaled.
And so having that playbook in place with the right language
and the right artifacts and courses of actions
and decision-making processes
will enable the discoverable information phase
during an event.
And so collaborative decision-making
really does become daily operations.
There's preemptive daily operations,
there's collaborative daily operations,
and there's execution through some of the daily operations,
which we just saw.
Passing the information back and forth.
Being able to understand what's in that dynamic catalog
that could be used for these daily operations.
What's the time variant for the fidelity required
for this decision-making process.
This could be a government entity doing this process
for the world, but probably not
this probably a mix and hybrid of commercial entities,
government entities and different national views
for how we'll do this and enable
the global commons going forward.
And we're really excited about
what this brings to new companies,
new third-party vendors.
Because with these new needs for data,
for new needs to enable these actions and behaviors
through a playbook,
there are new opportunity spaces
for commercial third party vendors and small companies
to assist in this overall dialogue towards
the global commons.
There are services like third-party surveillance groups
or risk modeling, or the action logging
that we alluded to in the, you know,
after analysis that we believe
needs to be a part of the dynamic space catalog,
will all assist in all these new needs
that are enabled by new space operations
and a dynamic space catalog.
So in summary, the future space catalog, it needs to expand.
It needs to expand with discoverable operator details.
It needs to span from future
to near real time and into the past.
And it needs to take into account new technologies
and the data that's necessary to do just this
The knowledge and decision-making,
it will be distributed.
It'll be discoverable,
it'll need new support infrastructure to enable.
So there are new needs, but that means new opportunities.
And this is an exciting time for space,
and a way for the community to come together
and really push each other
towards that free trade of space that we see
in other domains.
I appreciate you listening to this presentation.
If you have any questions,
please contact either myself or Andy or Sean.
Our emails are here,
and highly encouraged you to read the paper
and contact us with any further follow-up.
This is a topic that we are passionate about,
and we'll be pursuing.
Thank you.