Space Traffic Management
Tracking chaos in orbit
Cloud
CJADC2 warfighting requires cloud capabilities to be ubiquitous and globally available, not only at the command level but also across the front lines to provide secure application hosting and data handling. As a cloud engineering leader for DOD and government, SAIC stands ready to support modernizations, migrations and operations in the cloud. With a long history of supporting joint combined mission operations, we are providing expert continuous-integration/continuous-delivery support to power a rapid and agile pipeline of cloud-driven digital capabilities for warfighters.
SAIC is the prime industry partner for the Cloud One enterprise cloud for DOD. We have close and influential relationships with all the major cloud service providers and work closely with Cloud One mission-system owners on fielding hybrid and multi-cloud computing environments, DevSecOps chains and optimized managed services.
Close
Edge
CJADC2 warfighters will have enhanced situational awareness, navigation, communications and target acquisition — even in austere environments — as a result of feeding tactical information to command and control and receiving decision information in rapid and continuous data loops. Front-line operators will be equipped with wearable and portable devices that gather, process and send data, video and communications via mobile cloudlets. They will work with physically distanced, cross-domain human and unmanned collaborators in a tactical mesh network.
Edge is about giving commanders persistent access to the best kinetic/non-kinetic and lethal/non-lethal fires among ubiquitous options in their command-and-control toolkits. SAIC is working with a host of technologies and developing data architectures to enable cloud-driven edge services and capabilities.
Close
Transport
A range of needs for today and tomorrow’s battlefields makes high-bandwidth, ultra-high-speed, low-latency data transport critical for missions. Command-and-control and situational-awareness applications that feed the common operating picture will be pushing mountains of data. Crystal-clear streaming video requires enormous bandwidth. We will see peer-to-peer transfers of large data files in seconds using cell signals in austere and localized areas of the battlefield.
To create seamless connectivity between edge assets, and also between tactical partners, we are working with a diverse range of data transport options, including 5G, LoraWAN, LTE and Bluetooth. We need to utilize all available mobile-broadband means of moving zeros and ones between terminals, mobile satellite antennas and signal equipment.
Close
Data
Persistent access to data under rapid multi-domain, multi-level operating conditions is the key to CJADC2 success. Whether it is for facilitating information flows between DOD partners or between DOD and coalition forces, SAIC’s work transforms data to be platform-agnostic so that it can be distributed and shared more easily. We are supporting the transformation from network-centric to data-centric information systems that results in greater security-implementation flexibilityand machine-to-machine connectivity for data.
Our data engineering work also encompasses development of ontology and knowledge models to enable data fusion, development of AI algorithms for data collection and processing, and development of machine learning-assisted data loops between command and the tactical edge.
Close
AI-powered insight from space-track.org
Space traffic management is complex. Thousands of man-made objects orbit the earth, ranging from space debris to GPS satellites to the International Space Station. Keeping track of all of them is the U.S. Space Force’s space-track.org program. SAIC data scientists asked what insights they could gain from a space-track.org data dump and a few weeks of data analysis, applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Learn what they discovered.
Data science
Rapid discovery through space data
Data science blends statistics, computing, and expert insight. Given just 80 hours and space-track.org text files, SAIC’s team cleaned and clustered the data, identified outliers, and built visualizations—despite limited expert input during COVID-19. Imagine what’s possible with even more time and access.
Click on each card to learn more
Data
Solutions
Delivered
The Problem
Advanced Analytics
Data Science
What We Could Do
Click each card to jump to that section
Read more >
Read more >
Read more >
Read more >
The Problem
Tracking the chaos above
Space is crowded—over 23,000 objects currently orbit the Earth, ranging from defunct satellites to debris. Many of these tracked objects are as small as a softball, yet pose serious risks to active assets. The U.S. Space Force is responsible for identifying and monitoring these threats, relying on snapshots collected over time from a distributed sensor network. But these snapshots are just raw data. To understand which object is which, and what each is doing, those data points must be processed—rapidly and accurately—to maintain space domain awareness and enable timely response.
Turning orbit data into insight
By applying advanced analytics to orbital data, we can unlock critical insights into the behavior of objects in space. These insights help improve safety, predict anomalies, and support global space domain awareness.
Space-Track.org helps U.S. Space Command facilitate global space domain awareness, creating a safer space environment for all.
Advanced analytics
Through advanced analytics of orbit data, we can derive trends for each space object.
These trends allow us to detect irregular behavior that may indicate a collision or potential breakup event.
By comparing patterns across historical and trend data, we can begin to identify uncategorized objects and improve space traffic tracking accuracy.
Read more >
Read more >
Read more >
Turning data into action
With more time, data, and collaboration, these are just a few of the opportunities we can unlock to elevate space domain awareness and decision-making.
Build a pipeline to integrate space_viz and data science tools for a more interactive experience
what we could do
Human and machine intelligence, combined
Blending AI with human insight leads to faster, sharper discoveries. SAIC continues to push boundaries and uncover what’s possible.
Collaborate with SMEs to better define the problems they need to solve
Develop predictive models tailored to those specific SME needs
Use Sat Cat data from Space-Track to improve clustering and AI model training
Detect satellite anomalies and trigger alerts when patterns deviate—ideal for diagnosing issues like booster problems
Data
130 million+ rows of TLE data + 5 labeled satellite IDs
The team received over 130 million rows of Two-Line Element (TLE) data in .txt format (totaling 18.6GB), representing orbital elements of 45,000 space objects.
Close
Only five satellite ID numbers were provided as labeled examples of problematic objects, making this a true unsupervised data exploration task.
Solutions
From raw data to interactive visualization
SAIC developed a custom parser to clean the data.
Close
The cleaned data was ingested into a browser-based dynamic database, enabling fast, filterable queries in near real-time.
Using the open-source tool Cesium, the team containerized the data for a 3D visualization environment, allowing users to interact with and explore satellite behaviors visually.
These solutions created a foundation for future visual analytics applications in orbital data.
Delivered
A working prototype and foundation for further insight
Docker containers enabled modular data science and visualization functionality.
A GitHub repository was delivered with tools for ingesting, cleaning, and querying satellite data dynamically.
The visualization illustrated trends, clusters, and anomalies through figures and animations.
Close
Clustering techniques were applied to group similar objects and identify behavioral patterns.
Initial outlier detection code was implemented to highlight anomalies in satellite behavior.
Contact us today