Plug and play testbed to enable responsive space missions

There exists a growing need in the DOD for a tactical or responsive space asset to support real-time battlefield intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. The desired attributes include being: 1. responsive /sub e/ployable in days; 2. affordable - expendable tactical resources at a cost comparable to other tactical systems; 3. employable - assets must support the joint force commander (JFC); 4. integrated space/air/terrestrial system-of-systems - full network connectivity, bandwidth on demand, and augment other assets. To the warfighter, a responsive space asset would provide the capability to respond to unanticipated military needs in days, providing flexibility of response to rapidly field tailored payloads and coverage. This capability could also provide rapid reconstitution after a loss from attack or failure and counteract enemy adaptation, through denial or deception, to existing space capabilities. Most importantly the short deployment times and low cost would provide the United States a means for efficiently using the versatility, and relative safety of space to provide real-time support to the war fighter. To be responsive the space element must possess a modular design supporting "plug and play" (PnP) architecture, leveraging commercial parts and standards. Lending itself to a lean production and integration environment again utilizing standard interfaces and taking advantage of pre-qualified inventoried subsystems. Rapid deployment of these elements will make use of "canned" mission planning tools, tailored orbits for a given theater, built-in health and status monitoring, and autonomous test and checkout software and operations. The two emerging responsive mission objectives include space control and tailored, tactical intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR). Space control involves a situational awareness to sense threats against, and provide protection for, US space assets. The tailored, tactical missions offer high tempo ISR operations such as target characterization and emitter location in theater, perform real-time blue force tracking, and provide gap-filler, specialized communications support. The challenge is to develop and qualify the satellite technologies and rapid integration and test processes to support an operational responsive system in the next five years. Under an Air Force Research Laboratory SBIR program, MicroSat Systems is developing a PnP testbed to enable an operational responsive capability through development and ground validation of the various elements. Those elements include the mission definition and CONOPS specification processes, space segment, and the operational prioritization, tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (PTPED) process/infrastructure. Specific to providing an end-to-end mission simulation, the testbed should be equipped with the modeling and simulation tools to develop tactical satellite CONOPS and provide the warfighter with a front end tool for training. To validate utility to the end-user the testbed must be equipped with the capability to simulate the data processing and dissemination infrastructure envisioned to provide the battlefield commander with real-time data. The space segment of the testbed should consist of the hardware and software elements required to simulate the operations of a fully functional satellite system. The approach to developing a responsive mission testbed includes defining requirements, hardware/software architecture, technology development roadmap, starting with a core capability, and incrementally integrating and validating the developing components and processes as they emerge.