Flight Demonstration of Federated New Observing Strategies for Multiple Science Applications

Earth science measurements have predominantly been untargeted "mow the lawn" missions that collect nadir measurements with only slight adaptivity (e.g. only collect over land + coastal, collect during the daytime). These missions have enabled incredible science discoveries and increased our understanding of the processes that govern the Earth. However, these breathtaking advances represent only the tip of the iceberg in key measurements to drive Earth science. Increasingly precise and pinpoint measurements of critical, rare, and transient phenomena are needed to continue the rapid pace of Earth Science. While traditional Earth Science missions excel at acquiring global datasets, measuring rare, transient phenomena at finer scales requires a different approach. Why not acquire global coverage at finer and finer scales? Fundamental physics imposes trades in remote sensing instruments on spatial resolution versus swath. Additionally, active sensors demand energy to image larger swaths, increasing mission costs. This proposal matures and demonstrates in space Federated Autonomous MEasurement (FAME), New Observing System (NOS) technology to address this exact problem. Instead of acquisition of enormous amounts of data with the hope of acquiring rare, transient, science events of interest, FAME uses flexible, taskable assets to direct targeted observations where and when to capture these critical events. In FAME, observation requests are submitted to a service portal and a federated, heterogenous pool of assets are allocated to satisfy the requests. However, many questions arise from this radical new approach -- what do requests look like? How do requests get mapped to and fulfilled by actual spacecraft? How do the numerous entities operating the spacecraft coordinate? Our effort will answer such questions executing the largest flight and ground demonstration of autonomous spacecraft operations to date. Over fifty (50) spacecraft from diverse entities such as NASA, ESA, Ubotica/Open Cosmos, Loft, Apex, Planet, ICEYE, Capella, and others will be linked with a core of 7 spacecraft in full NOS configuration with edge computing and flight software to enable analysis of imagery and rapid notification to other spacecraft. We are working to extend this to 3 more spacecraft via an ESA led coalition. We will first (Year 1) mature flight capabilities and demonstrate autonomous operations and science-directed measurement in the NOS testbed. Y1 will also include several on-orbit tests including onboard AI analysis of imagery with rapid notification leading to responsive tasking and acquisition of follow-up data. In Years 2 and 3 we will scale up these demonstrations to the full set of assets demonstrating processing of thousands of alerts and simulated taskings and workflows executed and hundreds of said tests executed onboard and tasking actual spacecraft. This demonstration will prove the NOS promise of achieving high temporal density, on-demand measurement of science phenomena. We will demonstrate FAME on numerous science use cases from the NOS Workshop: Atmosphere Use Cases #1 Pollution transport between boundary layer and free troposphere, #2 Clouds and Convection and #4 Environment Interaction due to explosion; Carbon & Ecosystems Use Cases #1 Monitoring of Plant Species and Habitat Protection and #3 Algal Bloom; Earth Surface & Interior Use Cases #2 Landslides, #3 Volcanoes, and #4 Land Use Land Cover Change - Wildfires; Oceans Use Case #1 Algal Bloom Tracking -- Fisheries & Sea Life; and Flooding (multiple use cases). This Year 2 and Year 3 on-orbit demonstration will move the NOS paradigm into the mainstream via sustained flight on a numerous (7) spacecraft driving many more (50+) spacecraft.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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