Orbital Services Corporation LLC (OSCorp)
Autonomous defender spacecraft for in-space proximity operations of uncooperative objects
Idea in Government and Military
Introduction
OSCorp is an in-space services company developing the next generation of autonomous defender spacecraft. This enables sophisticated in-space proximity operations of uncooperative objects and addresses some of our biggest national security threats.
Problem
Imagine trying to navigate a dense, foggy forest with nothing but a small flashlight. Now imagine trying to catch a dead leaf in a strong and erratic gust of wind in the midst of all of this. The leaf's unpredictable movements and the turbulent nature of the wind also make it challenging to anticipate its position and intercept it with precision to prevent you from damaging its structure and ripping it apart.
This is similar to the challenge of tracking and understanding dead and uncooperative objects in the unforgiving orbital environment using ground-based radar to track, characterize, and predict the performance and behavior of smaller, stealthier, and far away objects.
Adding to this, the nature and complex orbital dynamics of capturing and modeling the behavior, health, and attitude of a dead or uncooperative object in orbit that is spinning out of control while traveling 23 times faster than the speed of sound make it orders of magnitude more challenging to capture it than to inspect it from a distance.
Opportunity
We are developing low SWaP-C wide angle non-mechanical beam-steering LiDAR sensor subsystems and utilizing LiDAR and VISCAM sensor data fusion and deep learning techniques, coupled with advanced and autonomous guidance and pointing capability synthesizing safety certificates to ensure long term safety of actuation constraints via Neural Lyapunov Functions during inspection, docking, and combined stack phases of in-orbit proximity operations (the dog fights analog in orbital warfare).