Automatic, Intelligent OPIR Asset and SSN Sensor Scheduling

Stottler Henke proposes to apply our highly commercially successful Aurora Intelligent Scheduling Framework to Satellite OPIR automatic, optimizing scheduling for the Joint JOPC, which daily schedules many billions of dollars of OPIR assets. The JOPC receives OPIR collection requests from the defense and intelligence communities and manually attempts to optimize the utilization of the sensors, maximizing the quality and quantity of the most important collections. However, there are many issues to consider, and the thousands of requests exceed the capabilities of even the most expert schedulers to truly maximize the executed results—and more complex and more numerous requests are anticipated in the near future. Building on the current Aurora-based JOPC Automatic OPIR Scheduler prototype, in Phase II, we will develop the full-scale, operational system, integrate it with the operational environment, and conduct tests and trials with JOPC Schedulers and real operational data. We are also developing a similar, largely-overlapping, secondary application – an automatic, intelligent SSN sensor scheduler for the NSDC and will also perform integration and testing. In both cases, the software will reduce manpower and response time by orders of magnitude, improve schedule quality, and allow more complex sensor requests or handle significantly more space objects.