Attribution in Contested Space

Attribution is the first, and most important immediate assessment, made in contested space.  Was that a bad actor responsible for intentionally creating certain effects or micro meteoroids and geomagnetic storms, or both? Taking action and making a decision – basically ‘Getting this correct at the speed of space’ has profound implications for national security, and commerce in space and on earth. Assured Attribution requires in near-real time the discrimination of a newly detected anomaly at that specific orbit, location and moment as emanating from Space Weather phenomena, OR from nefarious behavior, rogue actors or previously undetected debris. The SBIR Phase-I objective is to identify and assess Space Weather anomalies for Attribution within a high-resolution high-fidelity representation of the Space Environment using Precursor’s Space Weather Nowcasting platform. The platform builds a 4D real-time ionospheric representation of the actual LEO environment, even in highly disturbed conditions, through highly advanced sensing of the Ionosphere and ML (machine learning) Nowcasting. Precursor Space Weather Nowcasting is the only solution that delivers real-time, on-demand actionable information for assured Attribution. The deliverable is a simulation that combines actual real-time space weather conditions with Space anomalies to provide high-confidence attribution (i.e. space weather anomaly or characteristics of adversary threats).