Short Courses

Presented by:
Francois Laporte, CAESAR Team Leader, CNES
Lauri Newman, Senior Engineer, Goddard Space Flight Center – NASA
Matthew Hejduk, Chief Engineer, NASA Robotic CARA, Astrorum Consulting LLC

The threat of on-orbit collisions has become an increasing concern to the spacefaring community, both as an increasing mission risk due to a more congested space environment and through wider community awareness of the problem.  The operational practice of conjunction assessment in response to this risk has also become more commonplace, evolving from simply predicting close approaches between orbiting objects to sophisticated systems and processes for managing on-orbit collision risk.  This short course, organized and taught by industry leaders and subject matter experts in the field, is designed to educate beginners to intermediate-level practitioners on the fundamentals of conjunction assessment.

This course provides a three-part overview of Conjunction Assessment.

The first part is an extended background theory section that includes all the theoretical components which are needed in order to perform conjunction analysis and associated risk assessment. Topics include relevant astrodynamics basics, orbit determination methodologies, space domain awareness basic concepts, satellite conjunction assessment theory, quantified limitations of the two-dimensional probability of collision calculation, Monte Carlo analysis, cross-correlation between satellite covariances, and collision consequence assessments.

The second part of the course contains a treatment of modern conjunction risk assessment practices. The presenters share their operational experience and lessons learned, including some historical collision and close approach prediction statistics.  Topics in this section include using and interpreting satellite probabilities of collision, designing and evaluating collision risk mitigation maneuvers, and understanding and processing the various relevant conjunction assessment data products, including those provided by the 18th Space Control Squadron.

Altogether, more than 300 satellites are supported by either the NASA Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) or the CNES Conjunction Assessment and Evaluation Service: Alerts and Recommendations (CAESAR) within the EU SST framework, two instances of Middle Man. For both Middle Man examples, operations methods are presented and feedback is discussed. Both organization’s processes regularly evolve in order either to follow 18th Space Control Squadron upgrades or to improve analysis according to operational experience acquired during the past years.

The third and final section of the course contains a treatment of emerging technical and policy challenges for conjunction assessment activities.  The space environment has been rapidly evolving, and is expected to continue to do so in the coming years.
These changes include:

• large constellations are being proposed and flown
• cubesats are making space accessible to non-traditional space operators
• regulation and best practices are evolving
• efforts continue to define an architecture for a consolidated governmental or international Space Traffic Management (STM) entity
• Cis-lunar space is becoming more populated.

This course not only demonstrates that Collision Avoidance is a 2-step process (close approach detection followed by risk evaluation to enable making a sound collision avoidance decision) but also leads to the conclusion that the complicated topic benefits from an experienced Middle Man role to provide expert advice to spacecraft operators. This course would be presented jointly between Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (the French Space Agency) and the NASA Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis team.

Presented by:
Nancy Hayden, Distinguished Member Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories
Mark Ackermann, Systems Analyst, Sandia National Laboratories
Victor Gamiz, Senior Scientist, Tau Technologies

The space security policy landscape of the U.S., other space-faring nations, and the international community are in a state of flux, evolving rapidly at both strategic and operational levels to adapt to the changing space security environment and rapid technological advancements. More recently, as humans plan to return to the Moon’s surface as early as 2024, many nations are already deploying an increasing number of space objects in the cislunar space.

This course provides an overview of the current space security policy landscape and teaches participants how to assess its evolution in the context of the dynamic interplay between space policy and technology and define the important analytic questions that reveal the dynamics between the two. Considerations include the geopolitical, commercial, and technical contexts of policy and technology co-evolution, with lessons drawn from across domains in land, sea, air, cyber and space. Within these contexts, participants will explore the roles of technical, budgetary, and environmental constraints, and the interrelations between military, commercial and scientific drivers through past and present case studies and future scenarios. In so doing, participants will gain an understanding of space policy-technology dynamics – especially how shifts in policy and disruptions in technology have impacted relative advantage of geopolitical actors in and from space and how those may drive further policy and technology developments.

They will gain insight to assess –

(i) potential impacts of today’s evolving space security policy, norms, and doctrine on technical research and development needs for current and future space operations; and

(ii) how technical research and development advancements in space might shape future space security policy, principles, norms, and doctrine and their implementation.

In developing this understanding, the emphasis will be on applications for Space Domain Awareness (SDA), Space Traffic Management, and Space Control.

Presented by:
Roberto Furfaro, Professor, University of Arizona
Richard Linares, Charles Stark Draper Assistant Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Weston Faber, Senior Research Scientist, L3Harris

Over the past decade, the field of machine learning has experienced incredible improvements in the applicability and accuracy of its techniques. These advances present huge opportunities for the SDA community as it faces ever-increasing scope, sensing modalities, and data volumes. The short course will survey recent advances in deep learning and associated applications to SDA. The first portion of the course will cover a broad overview of modern deep learning techniques with an emphasis on those areas that seem most directly relevant to SDA. The second portion of the course will examine a set of case studies of the techniques being applied to real SSA problems, including code examples in Python with Tensorflow.

Course Objectives: In this short course you will:

• Get introduced to the theory and practice of Deep Learning (Dense & Convolutional Neural Networks, Variational Autoencoders)
• Get introduced to the theory and practice of Deep Reinforcement Learning (Q-learning, Policy Gradient)

Analyze SSA-relevant case studies via development of python-based codes for deep nets Jupyter notebooks walk-through

Presented by:
Patrick North, Chief Remote Sensing Engineer, Image and Computer Scientist, AGI, An Ansys Company
Novarah Kazmi Policht, Application Engineer, Ansys/Ansys Government Initiatives (AGI)

This short course is meant to provide the theoretical background for modeling and simulating Space Situational Awareness and Space Domain Awareness relevant targets, systems, and imaging conditions in the optical wavelengths from the visible through the longwave thermal infrared.

The seven parts of this course include:

1. Mathematical and Scientific Background (70-minutes)
2. Systems Engineering (15-minutes)
3. Types of SSA/SDA Sensor Modeling and Simulation (50-minutes)
4. High-Level Modeling Details (30-minutes)
5. Impact of Modeling and Simulation on Exploitation (25-minutes)
6. Low-Level Modeling Details (25-minutes)
7. Research Area Application Overview (5-minutes)

Presented by:
Liberty Shockley, Engineer, U.S. Space Force

Have you ever wondered what happens to R&D satellites when they no longer work or their mission is complete? The End-of-Life path chosen for a satellite is one of the most critical decisions of a program, and the least discussed. There are a few options depending on its orbit and what, if anything, has gone wrong with it. Historically, satellites have some fuel reserved to reach graveyard orbits, but this is only a short-term solution.  Nations are becoming creative with End-of-Life, but kinetic operations worsen the growing space debris problem. The final option is atmospheric re-entry, but that has concerns as well; vehicles must be small enough to burn up and not create debris that will hit a town, or the re-entry must be controlled to occur over an ocean.

The development process for a new satellite can be the longest, designing what components are needed for operation, how they will fit, the orbit, testing the vehicle, and then waiting sometimes years for a ride on a launch. Once in orbit, the responsible party must keep track of their satellite, performing maneuvers as necessary to avoid collisions. After all that, a piece of a satellite could live for hundreds of years on-orbit without responsible End-of-Life planning. This process is governed by technical standards, mostly the Inter-Agency Debris Committee (IADC) Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, which are a non-legally binding instrument that sets explicit expectations of the space community. The only legally binding international law pertaining to vehicles in orbit come from the United Nations (UN): the Outer Space Treaty, the Liability Convention, and the Registration Convention. The most applicable is the Liability Convention, which says if something, whether a fully operational satellite, or a piece of debris that accidentally came off your satellite, hits another nation’s asset, or re-enters and hits someone on Earth, you are 100% liable for all damages caused. From the 2007 Chinese Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test, NASA Orbital Debris Program Office predicts there are 150,000 pieces of debris larger than 1 cm still in orbit today. Orbiting at only 410 km, the International Space Station was one of 60 spacecraft most threatened by the debris from the recent Indian ASAT test in 2019. The goal of this workshop is to overcome the “language barrier” between the engineering and legal communities and discuss this specific re-entry case study.

Presented by:
Joseph Coughlin, Associate Director, The Aerospace Corporation
Rohit Mital, Chief Technologist, KBR

Presented by:
Thomas Schildknecht, Astronomisches Institut Universität Bern

Presented by:
Gregory Cohen, Associate Professor, Western Sydney University
Mike Hawks,Air Force Institute of Technology
Peter McMahon-Crabtree, Senior Research Physicist, AFRL/RVSW
Brian McReynolds, PhD Student, U.S. Air Force
David Monet, Senior Research Astronomer, AFRL/RVSW
Rachel Oliver, Doctoral Student, U.S. Space Force
Zachry Theis, Chemist, AFRL
Grant Thomas, PhD Student, Air Force Institute of Technology

Event-based sensors, or event cameras, are a novel class of optical imaging devices that offer a different way to detect, track, and characterize resident space objects. The technology has already shown promising results for SDA applications, and the pace of both software and hardware improvements is accelerating rapidly.  This course will provide a hands-on introduction to this technology and how it can be applied to tackling SDA tasks in a completely different way.

Presented by:
Ralph Dinsley, Executive Director, Northern Space and Security Ltd
Christopher Newman, Professor of Space Law and Policy, Northumbria University
Lauren Napier, Northumbria University

This half-day course will provide participants with an introductory overview of the way in which space exploration is governed through the lens of the Space Law Games. The course will examine the overarching international framework for space governance, with a focus on the Outer Space Treaty provisions and the related treaties, with a special examination of the Liability Convention. The discussion will then turn to the way in which the Space Law games have highlighted the difficulties with the current regime in respect of determining fault in orbital operations and discuss the impact that this will have primarily upon activities such as satellite operations and military uses of space but also in a broader sense on human spaceflight activity.

The rise of very large constellations and other innovations, such as active debris removal or on-orbit servicing procedures means ever more data of space is going to be needed to keep track of the increasing burden placed on the orbital environment. Participants will examine the need for corroborated information which removes as much ambiguity as possible about the position of objects in orbit is crucial to both safe and sustainable satellite operations. The course will discuss and evaluate the considerable barriers that exist to obtaining a more complete picture of this information.

Participants will then discuss the need for both codification of the norms for safe sustainable satellite operations and clarity on protocols for evidence gathering in cases where a collision has resulted in damage to a space asset and fault may be an issue. This discussion will identify that a way in which this could be achieved is through using “space law games”, which combine military war gaming and legal mooting. In these games, fictional scenarios could highlight some of the key operational and legal issues that might need to be dealt with. By identifying the data gaps in the fictional ‘law game’ scenario will help locate possible areas of enhancement in SSA capacity and gaps in evidential quality data from space. Identifying the war-gaming methodology for the simulation, and the need for distinct ‘games’ in different orbits is crucial as these will provide the data for the legal phase of the ‘Law Games’. Given the total absence of litigation in respect of fault in space, the paper will demonstrate how the space law games will try and highlight ways to fill the data gap that currently exists in orbital operations.

At the end of the course, participants will be invited to evaluate legal responses to new developments such as on-orbit servicing and active debris removal in LEO as well as mining and tourism in space, and, managing environmental issues in space through the lens of liability and the lessons that can be learned by employing a war-gaming approach. They will examine the challenges and opportunities for space governance posed by commercial activity of companies in an area where more traditional state and business organizations are facing competition from small and medium size companies.

Presented by:
Aaron J. Rosengren, Assistant Professor, Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego
Shane D. Ross, Professor, Virginia Tech

The nonlinear astrodynamics in the cislunar space beyond the geosynchronous belt (xGEO), encompassing secular, resonant, chaotic, close-encounter, and manifold dynamics, is dramatically different than the weakly perturbed Keplerian approach used for over a half century for the detection and tracking of objects near Earth. This course will review the foundational dynamics in the entire xGEO regime, including lunar mean-motion resonances (MMRs) and secular resonances, as well as the short timescale dynamics of libration-point orbits (LPOs) and and their associated invariant manifolds. A wide variety of dynamical models are employed to approximate the diversity of trajectories in xGEO space.

Whereas circumterrestrial and circumlunar orbits are largely governed by the perturbed two-body problem, in which the effects of the non-spherical gravity field and third-body perturbations on Earth or Moon satellites are often treated in a Hamiltonian formulation, all other cislunar trajectories, including lunar transfers and LPOs, are specific applications of the gravitational $N$-body problem. The simplest way to model trans-lunar trajectories is with the method of patched conics, whereby the Moon’s sphere of influence (SOI) separates selenocentric from geocentric motions. More realistically, however, trans-lunar trajectories are governed by the restricted three-body problem (R3BP), in which the spacecraft of negligible mass is simultaneously affected by the terrestrial and lunar gravitational forces. This framework efficiently captures Earth-Moon orbital transfers, models the regions of the Lagrange equilibrium points, and has generally been the most studied formulation of motion in xGEO space.

This course will review the multi-timescale astrodynamics of xGEO space and bridge the gap between the perturbative treatment of distant geocentric orbits and the restricted three-body dynamics of LPOs. Our scope covers the wide range of orbital phase space relevant to both historic and current xGEO missions launched by the US (e.g., AMPTE, Chandra X-ray Observatory, several EXPLORER series satellites, ARTEMIS), Europe (e.g., XMM-Newton, Cluster II), Russia (e.g., Prognoz, Spektr-R, Astron), as well as the significant future xGEO missions scheduled or proposed by over a dozen nations or organizations to be launched in this decade.

Presented by:
Wiley Larson, CEI
Pamela Magee, Editor, Space Technology Series
Moriba Jah, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin

This course provides a big picture perspective of Space Domain Awareness (SDA) that is focused on the actionable knowledge required to predict, avoid, deter, operate through, recover from, and attribute cause to losing or degrading space capabilities and services.

A major purpose for SDA is to provide decision makers with a quantifiable and timely body of evidence of behaviors attributable to specific space threats and hazards. SDA encompasses all activities of information tasking—collecting, fusing, exploiting, quantifying, and extracting—that result in identifying and predicting credible threats and hazards.

This course is of particular interest to space systems operators, system developers, managers and administrators. Anyone interested in space situational awareness, space traffic management and/or space domain awareness will find the course and course materials invaluable. This course will be exceptionally useful to space situational awareness professionals, space domain awareness analysts and designers, especially those interested in SDA sensors, data, data flow, data fusion and data sharing.

A copy of the new Ebook, Space Domain Awareness, by Pam Magee, Moriba Jah, Wiley Larson and Team is included with registration.

The objectives of this 1-day workshop are to:
1. Provide an Overview of Space Domain Awareness
2. Better Understand the Purpose and Scope of the Process for SDA
3. Articulate the Current and Future Approaches to SDA
4. Provide background knowledge and skills for the 5-day comprehensive SDA Workshop

Presented by:
Thomas Berger, Executive Director, University of Colorado / Space Weather Technology, Research, and Education Center (SWx TREC)
Vishal Ray, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Colorado, SWx TREC

Space weather is the largest source of uncertainty in LEO operations, complicating conjunction assessments and the calculation of launch and re-entry windows. In extreme events, space weather is a major threat to satellite and astronaut health, communication systems, GPS position, navigation, and timing systems, and even the electric power transmission grid. The most recent extreme space weather event in 2003 triggered a power outage in Sweden, interfered with airline operations, disrupted GPS services, and invalidated the entire LEO catalog, requiring several days of emergency operations at the then-JSpOC to relocate and re-establish the orbits of critical weather and national security satellites. Even minor storms can disrupt operations in LEO as the recent loss of 40 Starlink satellites due to excessive atmospheric drag during the geomagnetic storm of 2—4 February 2022 demonstrated.

In the last 5 years, the catalog of resident space objects has grown dramatically with several organizations including SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon, and the SDA planning communications “mega-constellations” in LEO. Discussions are ongoing to develop a civil Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and conjunction assessment capability in the NOAA Office of Space Commerce to relieve the DOD of responsibility for monitoring the growing commercial space operations. The occurrence of another extreme space weather event in this rapidly changing environment is not a question of “if” but of “when”.  Approaching the next solar maximum in 2024—2025, satellite and SSA operators will need to better understand and integrate space weather forecasting and nowcasting into their workflow, from launch through re-entry, to mitigate potential impacts.

To address this need, this short course will provide participants with practical knowledge to

• Understand the origins of space weather at the Sun and in the Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere
• Predict and mitigate potential impacts on their orbital and ground-based systems
• Assess the threat of incoming space weather storms in a historical context
• Find forecasting and nowcasting information prior to and during space weather storms

The course is organized in four parts. The first part reviews the sources of space weather and the chain of phenomena starting at the Sun and propagating through interplanetary space to arrive at the Earth.  The second part of the course focuses on the specific impacts of space weather on satellites, astronauts, and orbital operations including ground systems. The third part of the course reviews space weather storms in history, with a look at the origins of the events and the variety of impacts each storm had on the technology of the time. Students will interactively examine select events including the 2022 Starlink incident using the Universtiy of Colorado web-based Space Weather Data Portal. The fourth part of the course concludes with an overview of current space weather forecasting capabilities, emphasizing the observing systems, models, and products available. Participants will learn how to get information on forecasts and current conditions and will better understand the skill levels of the forecasts, watches, and warnings in order to effectively interpret the information in the context of their specific operations.

 Presented by:

Peter Zimmer, Astronomer, J.T. McGraw and Associates, LLC (JTMA)

Mark Ackermann, Optical Lead, J.T. McGraw and Associates, LLC

This course provides those new to the SSA/SDA community (as well as those seeking a refresher) an introductory-level understanding of the tools and techniques used for detecting and tracking Earth-orbiting satellites with ground-based optical instruments.  The course begins with an overview of optical telescopes and includes a discussion of many of the key terms and buzzwords one might encounter when reading about ground-based optical telescopes. From there, the course presents an overview of how these components are assembled into a sensor package for night time optical SSA and can be optimized to suit various mission goals.  This includes a discussion of satellite visual magnitudes, terminator viewing, sensitivity, search rate and related topics.  Finally, the course presents a brief look at the challenges and differences of optical systems designed to operate under illumination conditions not normally encountered with astronomical telescopes, such as those encountered observing near the Moon, for cislunar SDA, and for daytime optical measurements.

 Presented by:

Victor Gardner, Technical Director, Space Domain Awareness, LeoLabs Federal, Inc.
Edward Lu, VP Strategic Projects, LeoLabs
Darren McKnight, Senior Technical Fellow, LeoLabs

In this course, we plan to demonstrate how to leverage a global radar network for low Earth orbit space domain awareness.  Instructors will detail both the current LeoLabs cloud-based space domain awareness architecture as well as future improvements that are in development.  We will then demonstrate this web-based platform, specifically the catalog, fleet management, safety of flight, conjunction analysis, orbit analytics, and application programmer interface contained therein.  Finally, we will walk through real-world use cases and datasets with the LeoLabs platform using data collected from the LeoLabs radar network over the past five years.

Presented by:

Mark Skinner, Senior Project Leader for Space Traffic Management, The Aerospace Corporation
Angie Buckley, Principal Engineer/Senior Scholar, Aerospace Corporation
Robin Dickey, Space Policy and Strategy Analyst, Aerospace Corporation

Space is dominated by advanced technologies, complex engineering problems, and the dynamic forces of physics, but ultimately all of humanity’s activities in space derive from people and policies.  International space law, policies, and norms of behavior have interwoven over decades to form a complex web of principles and constraints that shape the behavior of all space actors from national policymakers to commercial satellite operators and individual consumers of space services. Although space is often referred to as a ‘Wild West’, this refers less to the complete absence of policy and law than to the challenge of navigating and implementing the many gaps and overlaps in the space behavior framework as it stands today. This short course serves as an introduction and exploration of the international framework for space activities. Experts from the Aerospace Corporation’s Space Safety Institute (SSI) and the Center for Space Policy and Strategy (CSPS) will provide an overview of the rights, responsibilities, and principles underlying space operations. Then participants will directly experience how this context can shape space activities through a dynamic crisis exercise. The workshop will conclude with a participant discussion on prospects for future space policy, law, and norms of behavior and the role that common information and understanding of both policy and activity in space can play in ensuring that operations promote space safety, security, stability, and sustainability.

This course is ideal for any members of the SSA/SDA community looking for a deeper understanding of the policy context surrounding the day-to-day technical challenges and operations. The course enhances learning by combining the sharing of knowledge from the Aerospace Corporation’s policy experts with engaging opportunities for participants to discuss and make decisions in a dynamic and challenging policy exercise. Space is a vacuum, but space policy is not, and a solid foundation in what the international space framework looks like today and where it may go in the future will allow for informed and creative decision-making for all kinds of space activities.

Presented by:
Fredrik Bruhn, Chief Evangelist, Unibap
Miguel Nunes, Deputy Director, Hawaii Space Flight Laboratory

SpaceCloud is a novel hardware and software solution for simple application development and deployment in space. It is operational in space since summer 2021 on multiple satellites and have so far demonstrated over 40 different applications in space. These applications have target many different areas and tools, and a vast majority are using machine learning based on CPU, GPU, and neural network acceleration (VPU) technology.

This course give an introduction to SpaceCloud and howto write dockerized applications compatble with the SpaceCloud framework. The course will also show examples of onboard applications using common development tools (e.g. python, OpenCV, tensorflow lite, hardware accelerated video encoding, core Flight System (cFS) in a container) and specialized geospatial and robotic softwares (e.g. L3Harris ENVI, Robotic Operating System (ROS)).

We will give an overview of in-orbit flight results and examples of radiation mitigation software, including detected single event effects (SEU) in space.

A reference spacecraft implementation will be presented.