AFRL Space University Research Initiative

Expanding our ability to track objects in Earth's orbit and beyond.

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The new international space race

Space domain awareness (SDA) describes the knowledge and real-time understanding of resident space objects (RSOs), including those man-made, like satellites, and naturally occurring, like meteoroids. The United States must overcome many technological challenges to achieve SDA dominance in the geostationary (GEO) region. The space beyond Earth's orbit - known as XGEO or cislunar space - is even more difficult to navigate. Fortunately, University at Buffalo researchers are up for the challenge.

Fred Kennedy, photo courtesy of the US Department of Defense.

“The U.S. needs to rapidly develop responses to threats that we can anticipate now, [threats] that could take existing organizations years or maybe decades to acquire a custom solution for. ”

3/12/24

Dr. Fred Kennedy
Inaugural Director of the U.S. Department of Defense
Space Development Agency

“We’re tracking more than 27,000 pieces of debris orbiting Earth. These objects can threaten human and robotic space missions, satellites and other spacecraft. ”

3/12/24

John Crassidis, Moog Professor of Innovation and SUNY Distinguished Professor, UB Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

“We are drowning in data yet starved for useful information. This project will allow us to find that actionable information for space decision-making that is otherwise buried among unusable noise. ”

3/12/24

Moises Sudit, Executive Director of UB's Collaborative Institute for Multisource Information Fusion and Professor, UB Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

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The SOURCE solution

Project sponsored by Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)

How do we plan to improve U.S. space domain awareness? Space Object Understanding and Reconnaissance of Complex Events, or SOURCE for short.

The SOURCE research project — one of two recent nationwide projects funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) — aims to develop new theoretical approaches leading to useful algorithms and investigate new sensor concepts with meaningful data and information fusion to provide a revolutionary SDA capability to overcome both XGEO and future SDA challenges within the GEO belt.

SOURCE is funded by the Space University Research Initiative (SURI) program through the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The program was created to spur university research into new technologies for the Air Force and U.S. Space Force (USSF) and encourages collaboration between academia and industry professionals.

3/12/24 Learn more about the SOURCE project

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The work, supported by a $5 million U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory grant, will strengthen the nation’s ‘space domain awareness’ abilities.