Improving air and space safety through enhanced coordination with the SpaceTracks Suite microservice architecture

Abstract

Within the SpaceTracks project, a Launch Coordination Center (LCC) prototype is currently being developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The aim of the LCC is to support the coordination among stakeholders of launches and re-entries before, during, and after the operation. Thereby, interests and needs of all stakeholders should be balanced and the situational awareness should be increased. At the core of the LCC is the SpaceTracks Suite (STS) microservice architecture. When developing software solutions to integrate spacecraft into European airspace, various aspects must be considered: different space flight characteristics, the complex air traffic system and other concept requirements like security, scalability, flexibility, resilience and arbitrarily expandability, hence an agile procedure model and a loosely coupled and flexible software design is favored. This paper describes the DLR current approach, design considerations and solution characteristics of the STS.