Office of Space Commerce Announces Commercial Partners for New TraCSS Pathfinder Project

Posted on September 25, 2024  Posted in Commercial Space Solutions for NOAA, SSA/STC Tagged with pathfinder, TraCSS

TraCSS logo in space above Earth with stylized orbits circling it

Today the Office of Space Commerce (OSC) announces the acceptance of its recent orders for space situational awareness (SSA) services in support of a commercial pathfinder project on satellite owner/operator (O/O) ephemeris. The purpose of the project is to examine the efficacy of generating improved satellite ephemeris based on data provided by satellite O/O’s.

For the provision of SSA data services in low Earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), OSC orders on the Global Data Marketplace were accepted for fulfillment by ExoAnalytic Solutions of Foothill Ranch, California, Slingshot Aerospace of El Segundo, California, and COMSPOC of Exton, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, SpaceNav of Boulder, Colorado, and Kayhan Space of Broomfield, Colorado, accepted orders to serve as data quality monitors for LEO and GEO observations over the course of this pathfinder. 

Together, these commercial providers will support OSC as it works to define quality standards for satellite ephemerides, and means of achieving those standards, for the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS).

This limited term project marks an important milestone in evaluating ephemerides (satellite position and trajectory data) using self-reported information from satellite O/O’s. The pathfinder companies will assess the quality of satellite O/O provided information for conjunction (potential collision) assessment, and where needed, improve the quality of the ephemerides. The results of this pathfinder project will accelerate OSC’s ability to leverage commercial SSA capabilities, specifically by improving the quality of the data inputted to the TraCSS conjunction assessment screening process. Increased data quality is expected to improve the usefulness of TraCSS SSA services to meet spaceflight safety needs.

The Improved Satellite O/O Ephemeris Pathfinder is the latest in a series of planned pathfinder projects designed to inform the future buildout of the operational TraCSS as a modern, cloud-based IT system that will provide basic SSA and space traffic coordination services to commercial and civil space operators for spaceflight safety, space sustainability, and international coordination. The initial Phase 1.0 of TraCSS is on track for release on September 30, 2024, with iterative upgrades to be released periodically thereafter.