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The number of satellites on low Earth orbit is poised to explode over the come years as more mega - constellations get along online . This will create new opportunities for bad actors to hide weapons or spy satellites among their fleet .
That ’s according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ) , which task outer space startup Slingshot Aerospace with develop a new instrument that could blame out potentially nefarious satellites purposefully hide in mega - constellations . That system is called Agatha — named after one of the precogs in the celluloid “ Minority Report ” — and it could put up a huge blessing for national space surety .
DARPA formally choose Slingshot for the political platform — call in Predictive Reporting and Enhanced Constellation Objective Guide ( that ’s right , PRECOG ) — last March , and the oeuvre officially concluded this January . The party was awarded around $ 1 million for the work , harmonize to administration catching database HigherGov .
Slingshot research worker give 60 years ’ Charles Frederick Worth of synthetic configuration data with which to train Agatha , so that the organization could detect bit difference in satellite behavior , using those differences to deduce the satellite ’s reliable operational directives .
As it turns out , there are “ lots of little William Tell that add together up to something much big , ” Slingshot ’s director of information science , Dylan Kesler , said in a recent audience . That could be small changes in the good deal of the orbiter , which affect its place holding , or if the artificial satellite communicate differently with Earth , or if it was always orient in the same counsel ( versus all the other satellites in the configuration ) .
While Agatha was prepare on simulations , Slingshot finally test it against substantial - world constellation by identifying non - villainous outlier satellites in operators ’ survive fleet . The program , which is run on Slingshot ’s space domain awareness platform today , now culls information from the company ’s own Global Sensor internet and its Seradata database , as well as other public and proprietary source .
Other startups have generated bombination for their plan to train rendezvous technical school to gather intelligence information on resister satellites . Slingshot ’s Agatha lick the crucial question of how these hustler will identify those satellites in the first place . This question becomes all the more imperative as countries like China announce plans to launch multiple mega - configuration over the coming decade .
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“ Historically , when there were n’t these 10,000 or 15,000 mega - constellations , it ’s reasonable that a homo or a squad of humanity could calculate at orbital trajectory data point and other reference of data and make an informed appraisal of which satellites to go after , ” Slingshot ’s VP of scheme and policy , Audrey Schaffer , said . “ But as the growth and activity in space just increases exponentially , it ’s blend in to become unimaginable for a human being to really strain through all of this data without the help of tool like Agatha . ”
