Nokomis Expeditionary Space Domain Awareness (NExSDA) System

The explosive growth of adversarial satellite systems threatens the United States and allies’ space assets. The US Space Command needs space surveillance capabilities that can rapidly detect, track and characterize spaceborne threats to provide perpetual and prolific Space Domain Awareness (SDA). The growth of foreign satellite mega-constellations necessitates growing the number of global sensing assets to maintain effective SDA. This is achieved with sensors that augment existing SDA capabilities in theater, are deployable by being affordable and having low size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP-C), and are ground, air, and ocean-based to enable more complete global coverage – all attributes required for Expeditionary SDA (ExSDA). SDA is achieved by multi-domain assets such as high-capacity ground radars and optical telescopes to monitor objects in space. Radar sites can continuously monitor but are expensive to build, operate, and sustain. Ground based optical telescopes can observe satellites when allowed a clear line of sight, but suboptimal conditions such as light pollution or obscuration from weather conditions limit optical systems’ ability to continuously monitor satellites and maintain custody.  Complementary technologies must overcome radar and optical systems’ limitations, have continual awareness of satellites’ locations, provide backup in detecting and tracking to not lose satellites’ chain of custody, and be able to characterize satellites and identify anomalous behavior. Nokomis’ ultrasensitive radio frequency (RF) Hiawatha sensor can passively detect Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO) satellites from their weak unintended RF emissions (URE) and Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) satellites from their active transmissions. Nokomis’ miniaturized Hiawatha Sensor in-a-Package (H-SiP) has an ultracompact low SWaP-C design while maintaining -170 dBm ultrasensitivity with all processing done onboard. Low SWaP-C enables ground, ocean, or high-altitude deployment, and the potential to augment radar and optical systems to detect and maintain custody of monitored satellites. The proposed effort will use H-SiP to develop a prototype Nokomis ExSDA (NExSDA) system to complement the 15th Space Surveillance Squadron’s optical assets to detect, characterize, track and maintain custody of LEO, SSO and GEO satellites. H-SiP will detect satellites from their RF emission signatures (active and/or UREs). Specialized software and algorithms will be developed for the NExSDA system to complement existing SDA technologies to characterize satellites and maintain chain of custody. Each NExSDA system will have a low SWaP-C multi-channel H-SiP sensor and antenna to detect and characterize satellites, and with multiple systems deployed and synchronized, the satellites will be astrolocated and tracked over time. The system will be easily deployable and designed to be integrated into existing optical SDA systems.