Design concepts for an open-source orbit domain information system for precision space domain awareness

到2021年，轨道上大约有3500颗运行卫星。在接下来的五年里，随着由数千颗独立卫星组成的巨型星座的发射，这一数字将增加一个数量级。这将不可避免地增加在轨碰撞和破裂事件的频率（自2010年以来平均每年约5次此类事件），这些事件会产生无法控制的碎片，对所有轨道物体构成灾难性风险。目前的空间监视系统基于冷战时代的技术，不再适合于目的（精度差，高延迟，为军事应用而设计）。迫切需要一个自由和开源的现代信息系统，能够实时处理（即估计和/或预测）成千上万个物体的轨迹，为国防、安全、民用、商业和公共部门的空间运营商提供空间域感知。伦敦大学学院的地理信息系是研究这个问题的理想场所。这项工作将利用和进一步利用伦敦大学学院轨道动力学库的能力，该库具有伦敦大学学院开发的最先进的卫星导航算法。该项目的结果将是一个为每个人建立的现代信息系统的设计概念。这个过程将包括用户研究、开发和迭代设计，以创建一个建立在自由和开源软件运动和数据民主化原则之上的系统。

In 2021, there were about 3,500 operational satellites on orbit. Over the next five years, this number will increase by an order of magnitude as mega-constellations, comprising thousands of individual satellites, are launched. This will inevitably increase the frequency of on-orbit collisions and breakup events (~5 such events annually on average since 2010) that generate uncontrollable fragments that pose a catastrophic risk to all orbital objects.Current space surveillance systems based on cold-war era technology and are no longer fit for purpose (poor accuracy, high latency, designed for military applications). There is an urgent need for a free and open-source modern information system with the ability to handle (i.e., estimate and/or predict) the trajectories of tens of thousands of objects in real-time to provide space domain awareness to space operators across the defence, security, civil, commercial, and public sectors. The UCL Geomatics department is an ideal place to work on this problem. The work will leverage and further the capabilities of the UCL Orbit Dynamics Library which features state-of-the-art algorithms for satellite navigation developed at UCL.The outcome of the project will be a design concept for a modern information system that is built for everyone. This process would involve user research, development, and iterative design to create a system that is established on the principles of free and open-source software movement and democratization of data.