A Concept for Civil Space Traffic Management
As technology has improved, operators have sought to use cubesats, as well as smallsats more generally, to perform increasingly more ambitious and sophisticated functions. Despite this, practical concerns associated with cubesat infant mortality, conjunctions, limited maneuverability, and debris generation have been relatively muted because most cubesats have been launched to lower orbits that limit both their orbital lifetime and consequences should a collision occur. NASA ARC has developed a concept for a highly-automated and distributed space traffic management (STM) architecture, drawing on similar work done to provide traffic management for small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operating at low altitudes. The system proposes a strategy to accommodate growing space traffic volume safely, as well as pave the way for a transition of civil STM authority to a civilian governmental entity. The architecture envisions an open-access software platform architecture of data and service suppliers, consumers, and regulators, connected via a set of application programming interfaces (APIs). The platform would build on, rather than replicate existing integration and coordination efforts within the space situational awareness ecosystem, using existing standards for data message formats from organizations like the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems and wrapping, rather than replacing existing integrations. We will present an initial STM architecture in this presentation, with a few examples showing how stakeholders can interact structurally, but flexibly, within this architecture.