Establishing Responsive Space: A maritime situational awareness experiment

Kurzfassung

Dependence on space-based infrastructure for navigation and communication on seas, as well as on land is at an all-time high. The failure of a satellite that provides these capabilities can have catastrophic consequences for civil and military end users. Thus, the need to protect this critical infrastructure has risen in priority. Here Responsive Space Capabilities come into play, which aim to recover and extend existing capabilities or integrate payloads onto satellites, launch them into orbit and operate them as fast as possible. These capabilities increase resilience and deterrence in a defensive way, but are still far from being reality, considering that the development chain until a satellite can actively be used in space usually takes several years instead of a few weeks or even days. As a first step towards this ability, the Responsive Space Cluster Competence Center (RSC³) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) aims to establish a technology base for research and development in this area, starting off by capturing todays baseline of industrial capabilities with a Maritime Situational Awareness Experiment (MSAE). This experiment includes planning, integrating, testing, launching and operating a small satellite together with industry partners. During these phases, current capability gaps are identified and research areas to speed up space processes are derived for the launch-, ground and space segment. As payloads for this small satellite mission a camera and an AIS (Automatic Identification System) receiver are planned, which serve the demand to detect AIS signals of cooperative maritime targets and optically confirm their position.