Launched in January 2024, the Consolidated Pathfinder is a short-term project focusing on space situational awareness (SSA) for the low Earth orbit (LEO) regime. The project examines how commercial SSA capabilities can be tested and integrated by the government. Insights gained are enhancing OSC's procurement and integration of commercial SSA data and capabilities for the TraCSS system.

Partnering with NASA, OSC has placed new orders for commercial SSA data and services on the Global Data Marketplace with all five companies participating in the Consolidated Pathfinder - COMSPOC, Kayhan Space, LeoLabs, Slingshot Aerospace, and SpaceNav. This increases OSC's total expenditure on the project to $15.5 million.

In order to further validate the metrics to be leveraged by the operational TraCSS system, the pathfinder's live data collection period is being extended to June 30, 2024. The extension also allows the OSC team and the pathfinder companies to gather additional data, further explore specific technical opportunities to improve performance, and conduct additional analysis for robust metric validation. Metric validation for the operational TraCSS system is the primary objective for the pathfinder.

Earlier this year, the Consolidated Pathfinder project team completed a preparation period and entered into a live data collection period. The preparation period involved: setting up a cloud-based, OSC-owned storage solution to support conduct in a test environment; setting up and confirming data flows from observation to the production of conjunction data messages (CDMs) across two LEO data providers with diverse phenomenologies and an orbit determination provider; collaboratively building a mission planning tool; and developing a set of metrics to be validated during the live data collection period.

Since the live data collection period kicked off, the OSC team and participating companies have confirmed regular data flows from observation to the production of CDMs, with follow-up tasking from the mission planning tool.

To support the project objectives, the pathfinder companies have built and are maintaining a space object catalog encompassing a majority of the LEO regime. The pathfinder also integrates data quality monitoring service providers to conduct data evaluation.

OSC is developing TraCSS as a modern, cloud-based IT system providing SSA and space traffic coordination services to commercial and civil space operators for spaceflight safety, space sustainability, and international coordination. OSC is advancing the TraCSS architecture, incorporating multiple inputs and on-ramps for commercial data, services, software, and innovation.

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