From a military standpoint, space-based capabilities and the need to know what is happening in space, or Space Situational Awareness (SSA), have become invaluable. Current SSA capabilities are expensive and are limited in scope. Hosted payloads however, provide a unique method to provide SSA in a relatively inexpensive manner. This thesis explores the development of an architecture for SSA using hosted payloads. For this thesis, research was conducted on existing systems. NASA and Air Force programs were reviewed to gain an understanding of hosted payloads, and a set of generic high-level requirements were developed for a hosted payload. These requirements will meet the needs of a hosted SSA payload that can enable a larger SSA architecture using hosted payloads. Once the requirements were developed, modeling and simulation using Satellite Tool Kit (STK) was were employed to develop an optimal SSA system using hosted payloads. Finally, once the architecture was defined, an Operational View 1 (OV-1) was developed to provide a graphical representation of the architecture.

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http://archive.org/details/buildinglocalspa1094537749

Captain, United States Air Force