Adaptive 4D Radar for Debris Tracking

Maintaining SSA dominance requires a pivot to include a more agile, predictive, and intelligence-driven solution that can fill in geographical and time-based gaps in coverage into the space enterprise SSA effort. A novel system is proposed that combines 4D radar, AI algorithms, and onboard computing in a small SWaPC component implementation on a commercially available small satellite to demonstrate the feasibility. The proposed platform technology will address subtopic Z-EXPAND.04 (LEO Sustainability), by providing agile solutions where: 1) more small debris is detected, tracked, and custodied on orbit, 2) potential detect/track gaps from a ground system are covered to increase safety of manned space flight, and 3) onboard software can be updated as needed to enable future high-performance. Initial Operational Capability would follow a SBIR Phase III effort and commercialization plan to deploy a constellation to provide continuous initial coverage of regimes of interest out to 1500km as an additional SSA layer to planned solutions. Numerous scientific studies relating to space-based millimeter wavelength sensing and communication technologies exist, although none focused on specific detection of 1-10 cm-sized debris object detection in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This proposal offers the opportunity to combine several technologies into a low cost solution for a challenging technical problem of small orbital debris detection and tracking at agile timeframes: COTS microelectronics capable of high speed, high bandwidth multi-channel signal processing; advanced radar techniques that take advantage of small footprint/GHz compute speeds; This FPGA approach is combined with powerful computing at the edge to maintain custody of debris for further tracking (via a small constellation) or handoff to remediation assets on the ground for elimination. A small constellation that provides this service serves to maintain continuous custody, subject to sensor refresh windows.