Space Object Environment Sensor Simulator

Abstract

The overall aim of ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) Programme is to support the European independent utilisation of and access to space for research or services, providing timely and quality data and expertise regarding the environment, the threats and the sustainable exploitation of outer space. The objective of the SSA Sensor Simulator (SSIM) is to provide an environment for end-to-end validation of the future SSA system before its actual deployment. The SSIM reproduces physical models for all system elements involved in the data generation process: sensor planning constraints, orbit propagation of SST and NEO, radar measurement generation, ground based optical measurement generation and space based optical measurement generation.The SSIM is implemented on top of ESA's simulation infrastructure, SIMULUS. The SSIM takes advantage of the wide palette of tools and components offered by SIMULUS in order to provide, among other things, a dedicated HMI that allows operators to configure runtime simulation scenarios, visualise simulation data and monitor and operate the facility itself. Moreover, one of the main objectives of ESA's SSA Programme is the provision of a number of so-called SSA precursor services. Several of these precursor services are expected to be deployed on a Common SSA Integration Framework (COSIF) based on the principles of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The COSIF is intended to enable the integration of existing assets as well as the deployment of new heterogeneous SSA applications. The SSIM serves as an architectural proof-of-concept that exposes its high level functionalities in the form of SOA services.In this paper we describe how the SIMULUS infrastructure is reused and the algorithm challenges addressed in the implementation of the SSIM. We also describe the design patterns followed to integrate SIMULUS in a SOA environment.