Oracle has to be able not just to detect space objects, but also discriminate targets of interest from what is currently an unfamiliar background for space imagery analysts filled with myriad stars and a growing number of spacecraft, AFRL's Lt. Col. David Johnson explained.
The new strategy represents a first US effort to build a whole-of-government strategy for "advancing scientific, exploration, and economic development activities" in cislunar space.
CDAO’s Advana data analytics platform is ingesting data from about 500 DoD business systems.
"We're kind of restricted right now, by the tyranny of the rocket equation. I've got to have mass to eject in order to move myself around within the Earth-Moon gravity well and beyond. How do we get past that?" asked SPACECOM deputy commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw.
The new satellite, set to launch in 2024, could provide comms links with astronauts and rovers on the far side of the Moon, as well as to scientists at the South Pole.
The largest of the four categories is called "Develop A Warfighter Punch" and includes $279 million for classified programs.
"[W]e don't have a military reason to go to the Moon today, but we do have long term-objectives that include the expansion out to the Moon and beyond," Space Force Chief Scientist Joel Mozer says.
As aircraft shrink, threats expand, and technology accelerates, aircraft engines must iterate along with the threats.
AFRL last Thursday held a classified stakeholder meeting to discuss R&D to underpin future military operations beyond the traditional near-Earth orbits used today.
"As you surely know, there is a lot of emotion in this on both sides of the argument, making it as much political as it is legal," said attorney Henry Hertzfeld of the DARPA plans.
Instead of focusing on the pressing need to shore up vulnerabilities in current and near-term space capabilities, says one critic, Space Force and SPACECOM are "all off trying to train for how they're going to go fight a space war."
The highly mobile D2S2 satellite will carry a 20cm camera to test the sensor performance needed for lunar imaging.
Explore how networked warfare, AI, and 3D-printed drones are reshaping US Indo-Pacific strategy.
Satellites and facilities in cislunar space could very well become the first customers of beamed power as it gradually comes on line, an Aerospace study finds.
"We are interested in technologies to support wide area search, narrow field tracking, and autonomous space domain awareness," says CHPS program manager Capt. David Buehler.
"If you look at the orbits of the stuff that's going around the Moon, It looks like a drunken sailor wandering around as compared to the orbits that we're used to describing closer to the Earth," AFRL's Col. Eric Felt says.