SPACECOM Needs More Data, Sensors To Track On-Orbit Threats - Breaking Defense

Space Command wants much more and more timely observational data, including from industry, to detect, track, characterize and determine what space objects are actually doing in near-real time — a mission set now dubbed space domain awareness, or SDA — according to military and industry experts.

“We need data in seconds, not in minutes, not in hours, not in days. The more things we can get machine-to-machine, and get humans out of the loop, the better,” said Col. Scott Brodeur, director of Space Command’s National Space Defense Center (NSDC) and director of operations at the Joint Task Force-Space Defense (JTF-SD), on Thursday.

But a key obstacle to the ability of the Space Command to use commercial data on the whereabouts of spacecraft and dangerous debris is the lack of a DoD agreed standard for formatting how observational data is reported.

“The government has not decided what we want our format to be. But when we do decide, in short order, I need y’all to be all in on getting onto that format,” Brodeur told the audience at the annual Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) conference on space observation here. “And so we know that we have the action, but once that happens, we need you to be all in to make that work. And that’s going to help us tremendously to get to the next level where we need to be for SDA.”

The NSDC is the organization at Space Command that pulls together sensor data and analysis from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the military on space activities of other nations. It falls under the JTF-SD, which is responsible for Space Command’s mission to protect and defend US space assets, also working with NRO and other Intelligence Community partners.

The NSDC has three “focus areas,” Brodeur said: SDA, providing “indications and warnings” regarding threats, and “space security command and control.”