Advanced Persistent-Surveillance Sky Camera

The United States Naval Observatory (USNO) is the Department of Defense’s authoritative source for the positions and motion of celestial bodies, motions of the Earth, and precise time. Part of the USNO’s mission involves regular improvement and verification of astronomical star catalog datasets with high-accuracy astrometry and photometry. Incidental collections on satellites may occur as well. Maintaining these high-accuracy datasets requires significant sensor resources; thus, the USNO has deployed a prototype persistent-surveillance sky camera array, the Wide Area Staring Photometer (WASP), to significantly increase observation collection rates. While the WASP successfully validated the approach, the natural tradeoffs between coverage, cost, detectability, and accuracy have motivated the need for an improved WASP 2.0 design. This new design must (i) enhance detection sensitivities to higher visual magnitudes; (ii) improve astrometric accuracy to milliarcsecond levels; (iii) reduce the physical footprint of the array; and (iv) maintain a wide field-of-view (WFOV) with simultaneous multi-filter photometry. To address these challenges, Slingshot Aerospace designed a WASP 2.0 system that meets or exceeds USNO requirements. In this follow-on Phase II program, Slingshot will build and demonstrate an operational prototype for USNO evaluation. This system will leverage lessons learned from both USNO’s WASP program as well as Slingshot’s experience designing, deploying, and operating “Argus” WFOV arrays for satellite tracking.