Nichols Martin
Mitre has developed a software suite that the U.S. Space Force is now testing for use in tracking satellites and space debris, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.
The nonprofit turned the Sensor Network Autonomous Resilient Extensible or SNARE over to Space Systems Command in July after a two-year phase of internal development.
Mitre also presented a paper on SNARE’s technical details at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference.
SNARE is six hours faster than SP Tasker, the current Space Force system, in locating again a space object, and is capable of enabling a 0.8 kilometer object accuracy improvement in Space Force’s catalog, according to the paper.
Frederick Palkovic, deputy chief of SSC’s space domain awareness division, told Breaking Defense that the SNARE program is done with initial modeling and prototyping, and is now entering the development of an operational prototype.
“Space Systems Command has recently begun an initial operational prototype effort under execution. SNARE will be evaluated through a series of Space Systems Command prototype activities for its potential suitability and effectiveness as part of a larger Space Domain Awareness tasking and autonomy architecture.”
However, Bob Carden, senior systems analyst at Mitre, cited possible hindrances to SSC achieving SNARE’s full operational capability: integration with current systems and hardware footprint and its management.
“I think the government’s role at this point is to figure out what type of architecture they want to deploy it, because there’s lots of possible ways to do this,” he said.
