Leveraging Commercial Space for Earth and Ocean Remote Sensing (2022) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 16-36
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From page 16... ...
This interplay is actively driving the current and future ecosystem landscape of SmallSat commercial services and partnerships; the development impactful to future mission principal investigators; and those that would seek to utilize the outcomes of their work. 1 Bryce Space and Technology, 2021, State of the Satellite Industry Report, BryceTech, Alexandria, VA, http://brycetech.com/reports.
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From page 17... ...
In 2020 alone, there were 1,202 SmallSats launched; 937 were commercial missions from SpaceX's Starlink and OneWeb and 174 represented all other SmallSat missions. The remaining 91 SmallSats launched in 2020 were a mixture of government civil/military and nonprofit missions (see Figure 2.1)
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From page 18... ...
strengthens corporate reputations while broadening community interest in SmallSats and commercial partnerships as a means to advance mission objectives of national priority. 4 Bryce Space and Technology, 2021, Start-Up Space: Update on Investment in Commercial Space Ventures 2021, BryceTech, Alexandria, VA, https://brycetech.com/reports.
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From page 19... ...
Distributed cloud computing infrastructure, integrated with telecommunications, is in active commercial development where users no longer need to build and/or maintain the capability themselves, paying rates directly tied to the level of service and performance desired. Commercial industry has also moved to provide observational measurements as a service for purchase through data-buys, while others are making a business in data curation, fusion, quality control, and analytics.
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From page 20... ...
The New Space ecosystem landscape consists of partnerships and commercial services. The context of assessing how these both support the needs of mission development is qualitatively shown in Figure 2.2 as also influenced by the history of work within this community.11,12 This diagram represents the evolution over time of the utilization of partnerships and commercial services for SmallSat mission development.
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From page 21... ...
This is driving the potential for future establishment of fully commercial services for full end-to-end mission development, operation, and product generation as a service, but this level of product offering does not yet exist. Today, the "Target SmallSat Mission Development Regime" represents the current most effective stage of SmallSat mission development for high-priority and strategic science missions.
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From page 22... ...
Understanding this range of development helps establish a basis to determine what process enhancements in technology development, standards, and best practices can support the development of government missions. Even in the context of government mission development striving to have an appropriate balance between commercial services and partnerships, this does not mean that government SmallSat users may be effective only in the target regime.
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From page 23... ...
The "Target SmallSat Mission Development Regime" is the ideal region for this development, but there will likely also be government organizations that, owing to the nature of their investigations, cannot easily partner with external organizations and will rely entirely on procured commercial services. Reliance on proven commercial products, with innovative procurement mechanisms, to support observations sustained over long time periods, is why most government missions would emphasize commercialization over partnerships with non-commercial entities.
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The technical maturity of commercial services across all these areas varies, as highlighted in Figure 2.4. The mission lifecycle begins with the process of defining data requirements and examining existing data sources to determine if they can be met without building anything new.
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From page 25... ...
This implies, in terms of the level of maturity of commercial services to support full end-to-end mission designs, that a complete system-level integrated approach does not yet exist. As a result, fully outsourcing complete mission development to a commercial provider is not an option that exists today.
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From page 26... ...
The hosted payload path is notionally much simpler than the full mission development articulated in Figure 2.4, and there are growing commercial opportunities for hosted payload slots. While there are challenges related to the constraints of the host and complex integration and de-confliction with other payloads, this is an option worth considering for many missions.
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From page 27... ...
The main incentive is the understanding that SmallSats have demonstrated high-quality science measurements, which can be performed rapidly and affordably, and that greater interoperability and standards can grow the diversity of investigators creating new business opportunities to fly missions of national interest. COMPARING COMMERCIAL SERVICES MISSION DEVELOPMENT AGAINST ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES Most SmallSat missions thus far have not been flown in support of long-term sustained observations for operational missions of national interest.
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From page 28... ...
consistent commercial sensors with launch vehicle, safety, and other mission requirements Mission Systems Engineering and Concurrent systems engineering capability Fully integrated high-fidelity environments Integration with de-coupled tools for integrated mission for concurrent design, integration, calibration, design of limited fidelity and operational commissioning Cloud-Based Architecture Well-established commercial services Advanced in capability to integrate legacy including public, private, hybrid, and digital active archive center and other data government options systems with commitment to preserve scientific data in perpetuity NOTE: Various infrastructure-related topics supporting SmallSat mission development are listed allowing comparison of the current state of commercial capability versus technology needs to support future scientific mission development.
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From page 29... ...
Experienced commercial teams and other strategic partners can be fully leveraged, representing the most desired state for SmallSat mission development with lower overall mission development risk. This enables a balance among commercial services and developer-driven innovations specific to key measurements of interest.
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From page 30... ...
As the ecosystem landscape evolves toward a capability for full commercial services for mission development, this can increase certain risks in that nearly the entire mission development has been ceded to commercial industry, meaning that the ability to perform innovative measurements of national interest may be limited to the capabilities represented by the current state-of-the-art of commercial organizations. This can create a ceiling in mission capability.
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From page 31... ...
Although it categorizes and indicates that infrastructure exists to support the range of capabilities for mission development from spacecraft manufacturing through cloud-based architecture for data management, all of these capabilities need continued enhancement over the next 5–10 years to enable a robust commercial ecosystem to reduce the time from concept development to operations and data return. Many of these capabilities, spanning technology, infrastructure, and processes, are on track to be available as fully vetted commercial services within 5 years, while others may need 5–10 years to come to full fruition.
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From page 32... ...
A clear value proposition to support standards needs to be made for commercial industry to adopt and incorporate them into existing and future products or services. Technology and manufacturing standards are typically accomplished by professional societies through organizing groups of stakeholder representatives.
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From page 33... ...
Thus, the maturation rate of these capabilities will also impact decision-making regarding development and readiness/adoption of HSA. As will be described in subsequent sections, HSA could, under appropriate contract mechanisms, also serve as an enabling capability to provide standardized services for government mission development across a variety of commercial services.
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From page 34... ...
RECOMMENDATION: The Office of Naval Research should take full advantage of opportunities for the infusion of dual-use technologies deriving from participation in existing government technology development programs such as the Air Force Research Laboratory's AFWERX, the Small Spacecraft Technology Program, the government's Small Business Innovative Research program, and the government's Small Business Technology Transfer program. CONCLUSION: The rapid expansion of space systems and operations knowledge throughout the commercial space industry provides numerous opportunities for the Hybrid Space Architecture and other U.S.
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From page 35... ...
• Improving interoperability: Allowing interoperability among U.S. government, allied, and commercial space systems.
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From page 36... ...
Hybrid Space Architecture A New Space ecosystem opens the door to the consideration for a multi-layer system architecture that would aggregate multiple information sources, whether they be from traditional space, SmallSat systems, commercial services, or foreign partners to collectively enhance the information pipeline to the end user, while supporting increased on-orbit capability and overall resiliency. This multi-layer system architecture is called HSA.
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