SSA TRAINING PLATFORM - PROPOSAL

A TRAINING PROJECT IN SSA

One way of teaching is immersion into an application of the subject to be taught.

This proposal discusses the teaching of Space Situational Awareness by the development of consoles in which the student can experience the environment, analysis, forecasting , model and graphics use and development in one or more of the three domains of SSA:

Satellites and orbital/artificial space debris
Space weather
Planetary defence / NEOs

SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Three by three or four by two wall monitors to display the space situation with particular reference to the site and Australian satellites.

Some of these could be rotating displays to add a real-time awareness.

SPACE WEATHER

Three by three or four by two wall mounted rotating displays to show the various parameters important to space weather.

Three computer consoles for forecasting, analysis and development.

PLANETARY DEFENCE

Three by two wall mounted displays for rotating information, analysis and modelling.

Three computer consoles for image reduction, analysis, modelling and development.

EXAMPLES

The European Space Operations Center located in Darmstadt, Germany

The US Space Weather Prediction Center located at Boulder, Colorado. A joint operation
between NOAA (Department of Commerce and the USAF/USSF(US Military)

The Australian Space Weather Forecast Centre. Located at Sydney (later moved to Adelaide).
The Space Weather Services forecast centre (currently part of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology).
The duty forecaster here is Zahra Bouer.

There are many commercial companies that also maintain their own SSA
centres but few of them release images, except for the sensors that
they deploy around the world. This includes Exoanalytics, COMSPOC,
LeoLabs and Slingshot, all of which have optical and/or radio sensors
in Western Australia. The image above is a statistical product from COMSPOC.

The US Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). Located at Vandenberg
Air/Space Force Base, northern California, the JSpOC is a joint
operation between the USSF and Commercial Entities for the purposes
of CONASS (Conjunction Assessment) of their respective satellites.

An SSA analysis and forecast center console can also allow visitors
(VIPs, secondary students, general public and others) to be shown
the scope of the work being performed and introduce the concepts
involved at various levels.

SCOPE / DEVELOPMENT

The development of this project can be done in stages and if students are involved the development can be a training exercise in itself.

Initially a console may be set up using internet data without the need to construct any sensors, but the inclusion of several sensors will allow students to become acquainted with a range of the equipment necessary to provide an SSA service.

Air Force and Space Force cadets at the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs,
Colorado inspect one the Falcon Telescope Network telescopes that
provides them with SSA data. UWA hosts an FTN sensor at Gingin.

Multiple skills will be required for the development including:

Information technology
Graphics Design
Programming
Model Development
Electronics
Mechanics

RESOURCES

Real Estate

A large room will be required, probably on a floor near and with access to the roof so as to minimise cable lengths to sensors placed on the roof (at a later stage of the project).

Console Hardware

Six to nine large monitors (TV sets are usually cheaper than large monitors – this is what was used in the Australian Space Weather Forecast Centre shown in a previous slide. JB HiFi is currently selling 50” TV sets for $400 (ie 9 monitors for $3600)

The computing requirements to drive these monitor and run appropriate programs (developed in house) can be handled by Raspberry Pi single board computers. A RPi5 can handle 2 monitors each, so one console will require ~5 RPi5 at <$200 each or $1000 for each console. These will be adequate for processing Geosats. Only if it is decided to do CONASS on Leosats will a higher power PC be required.

Sensors

Some sensors can be constructed at minimal cost. For instance a sensor to monitor the GPS constellation of satellites can be constructed using a $50 GPS module with NMEA digital output. This is fed directly into a serial port (4800baud) of a RPi and everything else is programming (which has already been done). This will display a sky map showing the position of all GPS satellites above the horizon, together with a 32 panel display where each rectangular panel give details such as az,el, SNR for each satellite (see slide 19). Other sensors such as a white light and H-alpha solar telescope or 3-4 wide field telescopes to provide images of the geosync belt or an ionospheric TEC monitor will probably come out at around $5000 to $10,000 each and will need to be housed in an observatory that will open and shut via electronic command ($20-100K).

By far the largest cost will be in people power: developers, trainers, students and supervisors.

Displays

Some simple displays can be set up very quickly to test the console. One example is the solar information display below. The solar data can be seen to vary in real time.

Another low cost real time display is the GPS constellation monitor show below. A GPS module with NMEA output is all that is required.

Australian Space Academy