The United States Naval Observatory (USNO) is the Department of Defenses authoritative source for the positions and motion of celestial bodies, motions of the Earth, and precise time. Part of the USNOs mission involves regular improvement and verification of astronomical star catalog datasets with high-accuracy astrometry and photometry. Incidental collections on satellites may occur as well. Maintaining these high-accuracy datasets requires significant sensor resources; thus, the USNO has deployed a prototype persistent-surveillance sky camera array, the Wide Area Staring Photometer (WASP), to significantly increase observation collection rates. While the WASP successfully validated the approach, the natural tradeoffs between coverage, cost, detectability, and accuracy have motivated the need for an improved WASP 2.0 design. This new design must (i) enhance detection sensitivities to higher visual magnitudes; (ii) improve astrometric accuracy to milliarcsecond levels; (iii) reduce the physical footprint of the array; and (iv) maintain a wide field-of-view (WFOV) with simultaneous multi-filter photometry. To address these challenges, Numerica proposes to design an innovative and highly-capable persistent-surveillance WFOV staring array that meets or exceeds USNO requirements. This system will leverage lessons learned from both USNOs WASP program as well as Numericas experience designing, deploying, and operating Argus WFOV arrays for satellite tracking.
Benefit: The proposed research and development will yield direct benefit to the USNO by enabling it to provide enhanced position, navigation, and timing (PNT) services to many DoD missions and programs. Specifically the compact, ruggedized, and cost-effective WASP 2.0 system will maximize field-of-view (FOV), provide simultaneous multi-filter photometry, and produce star and satellite observations at higher astrometric accuracies and detection sensitivities than the previous WASP iteration. The primary transition path for the proposed WASP 2.0 system is to USNO via successful execution of an extended SBIR program encompassing the design, development, and production of multiple WASP 2.0 systems and subsequent deployment of these systems within the USNOs worldwide remote telescope network. Two additional transition paths for the proposed system are (i) the sale of WASP 2.0-inspired systems to SDA customers and astronomers, and (ii) the sale of SDA data products derived from WASP 2.0-inspired systems deployed within the Numerica Telescope Network. Indeed, WASP 2.0 will inform the next iteration of Argus, and thus have a direct commercial application by achieving increased accuracy and sensitivity compared to its predecessor.
Keywords: Satellite Tracking, Satellite Tracking, Space Domain Awareness, Astrometry, optical sensing, Persistent Surveillance, Sensor Design, Star tracking, Photometry
