OPIR Model Image Creation Responsive to Orbit Needs (OMICRON)

As passive electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors are deployed in large-scale swarms, such as proliferated low-earth orbit (PLEO) satellite constellations, algorithms must be developed to reduce the volume of image data to allow analysts to focus on high-value information. Where that data reduction is done on board using low-SWaP computers, algorithms must be trained and installed pre-launch before any real-world data has been collected. For over two decades, the industry standard synthetic scene generation tool from Proton Research Associates, PRA Toolkit, has been the gold standard for physics-based overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) scene generation. Unfortunately, the software has not been maintained during much of that time. Intervening years have seen the development of TPUs, GPUs, multi-core processors and high-performance cloud computing resources, none of which can be utilized by PRA Toolkit. SciTec’s proposed OPIR Model Image Creation Responsive to Orbital Needs (OMICRON) is an updated scene generation toolchain based on the FLITES v2.2 simulation engine with expanded background scene capabilities specifically tailored to the simulation of OPIR and similar on-orbit imaging. OMICRON will include the necessary plugins to directly convert PRA Toolkit background scene databases into FLITES backgrounds, as well as the ability to manage large, high resolution tiled imagery (e.g., Vricon/MAXAR) to accommodate modern and future satellite payloads. OMICRON will also include plugins for managing satellite orbital motion, attitude control, and payload commanding to streamline the simulation pipeline. OMICRON Phase I will develop and demonstrate the core functionality by creating a minimum viable product (MVP) plugin that will read PRA Toolkit input files and composite scene database to generate inputs to the FLITES API.