Space Situational Awareness Working Group

Purpose: 

The Space Situational Awareness Working Group aims to inform and educate the global geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) community to form a common understanding between government, industry, and academic stakeholders on how ground-and space-based sensors, information derived from those sensors, and space-domain analytics contribute to building a comprehensive understanding of the entire space domain.

Objectives: 

• The National Space Policy (December 9, 2020) that sets out the nation’s commitment to leading in the responsible and constructive use of space, promoting a robust commercial space industry, returning Americans to the Moon and preparing for Mars, leading in exploration, and defending United States and allied interests in space.
• White House Space Policy Directive 3 that articulates the need for enhanced SSA to contribute to Department of Commerce Space Traffic Management (STM)2 initiatives in concert with Department of Defense, Department of State, and NASA.
• Department of Defense establishment of U.S. Space Command in concert with designation of space as a warfighting domain and the need for more comprehensive Space Domain Awareness (SDA) defined as the “identification, characterization and understanding of any factor, passive or active, associated with the space domain that could affect space operations and thereby impact the security, safety, economy or environment of our nation.”
• White House Policy Directive 4 that established the United States Space Force as a new branch of the United States Armed Forces to protect the nation’s interests in space and the peaceful use of space for all responsible actors.
• Current and emerging mission needs of defense, intelligence, civil space and commercial users of multi-modal ground and space-based sensors, information, and analysis to support existing and emerging SSA, SDA and STM policy and operational objectives.
• Current and emerging SSA capabilities to detect, track, identify and characterize Resident Space Objects (RSOs) operating within the entire space domain to include Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geostationary Orbit (GEO), Cislunar and beyond.
• Technological shortfalls of multi-modal ground and space-based SSA TPED that may need to be addressed to answer national policy and/or tactical government users needs’ end-to-end.
• Coordination of IR&D where applicable to address gaps and shortfalls.