Office of Space Commerce Announces New Commercial Pathfinder Project for TraCSS
The Office of Space Commerce (OSC) announces a new opportunity for commercial space situational awareness (SSA) companies to support the development of the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). Vendors are invited to participate in a TraCSS pathfinder project that will examine the efficacy of generating improved satellite ephemeris based on data provided by satellite owners/operators (O/O’s). OSC is investigating this capability to help inform quality standards for satellite ephemerides, and means of achieving those standards, for the system.
Ephemeris (plural: ephemerides) is a table indicating a space object’s position and velocity at specific times.
To initiate its Improved O/O Ephemeris Pathfinder, OSC placed three orders in the Global Data Marketplace for fulfillment by commercial SSA vendors:
- An order to generate ephemerides for a given set of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO);
- An order to generate ephemerides for a given set of satellites in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO); and
- An order for two companies to provide data quality monitoring services related to the above two orders.
Vendors have until Monday, September 16, at 12:00 noon EDT, to provide proposals in response to the OSC orders.
To view the orders and submit responding proposals, interested parties must be registered vendors in the Global Data Marketplace (globaldatamarketplace.com), an online transaction system established by the Department of Defense in partnership with BlueStaq.
The Improved O/O Ephemeris Pathfinder is the latest in a series of planned pathfinder projects designed to inform the future buildout of the operational TraCSS. On June 30, OSC concluded the live data collection period of its Consolidated Pathfinder, which placed $15.5 million in orders with five commercial SSA firms. Results of that effort are currently under evaluation and will be released later this year.
OSC is developing TraCSS as a modern, cloud-based IT system that will provide basic SSA and space traffic coordination services to commercial and civil space operators for spaceflight safety, space sustainability, and international coordination. OSC is steadily progressing on building out the TraCSS architecture, with multiple inputs and on-ramps for commercial data, services, software, and innovation.
TraCSS is on track for an initial Phase 1.0 release to beta users at the end of this month.