Space Data Systems (ISR-3)

ISR-3 has core capabilities in real-time data acquisition and control, adaptive computing, small-satellite ground stations, scientific and database programming, and system and network administration. ISR-3 group members have a variety of backgrounds, including computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering. ISR-3 employees and students work closely with other groups throughout ISR division and the laboratory on joint projects.

The FORTE satellite explores lightning and atmospheric science.

Collaborators:
ISR-3 collaborates with external organizations, including the United States Air Force and NASA, in tasks involving space environmental data handling, software development, and satellite turn-on and early-orbit activities. ISR-3 technical staff members also work closely with researchers at Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute on reconfigurable computing, the University of New Mexico on distributed sensor networks, and the University of Alaska in Fairbanks on the FORTÉ satellite.

Projects:
With specializations in embedded systems, ground stations, scientific data analysis, and systems administration, ISR-3’s expertise is represented in a number of projects to develop data acquisition systems for ground-, air-, and space-based scientific experiments.

ISR-3’s recent activities illustrate its efforts in the highly specialized field of space data systems, as well as surveying the future development needs of those systems.

• Next Generation (NextGen) Project—A survey of LANL’s hardware and software needs for flight, ground, and test technologies and standards. The purpose of this project is to increase LANL’s efficiency in developing future space-based instrumentation, both decreasing costs and reducing the time needed to field systems.
• Designing “adaptive computing” machines based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). To handle increasingly complex sensors producing larger volumes of data, ISR-3 is using adaptive computing to extract, in situ, critical information from sensors. For many signal processing tasks, FPGAs can provide a 100-fold computing performance advantage over traditional microprocessors. Extracting information from data in real time improves control of the sensor, allows for improved observations or extended look time at a region of interest, and helps manage resource requirements for telemetry, analysis, and storage.
• Developing innovative satellite ground stations to communicate with DOE’s ALEXIS, FORTÉ, and CFE small satellites. A major focus is increasing autonomous satellite operations to reduce the need for operations staff.
• Applying algorithm development, data handling, and data mining techniques to a wide range of data collected by ISR-Division projects. ISR-3 maintains multi-user open and secure computing environments for use in data analysis and visualization.
• Developing and testing small, low-cost, application-specific digital cameras using “camera-on-a-chip” and embedded system technologies. Leveraging the recent explosive growth in personal digital camera technology, the programmable, second-generation NTvision cameras exploit scene changes in real time. An in-camera scene analysis provides immediate and key information in a diverse range of time-sensitive applications, including material inventory verification for nuclear safeguards.
  

Among the group’s key undertakings are the development of ground stations, integration and testing, and satellite operations for the ALEXIS, FORTÉ, and CFE satellites. Following are additional projects in which ISR-3 is playing a lead role:

• Cibola Flight Experiment (CFE)—Development of reconfigurable computing software to enable technology for on-board data analysis and development of single platform geolocation.
• Deployable Adaptive Processing Systems (DAPS)—Development and prototyping of systems for real-time pattern recognition, detection, and feature extraction of data gathered on land, in the air, or in space.
• Distributed Sensor Networks with Collective Computation (DSN-CC)—Development of a network of nodes with sensing, communications, and computation capabilities. Each DSN node runs a program that senses its environment, listens for transmissions from neighbors, computes, and transmits—all without a central control. Unlike a centralized approach through which all data must pass, DSN-CC saves communication bandwidth, provides redundancy, eliminates single point failures, and delivers conclusions rapidly to users.
• Defensive Counter Space Test Bed (DTB)—As part of the Rapid Attack Identification and Response System (RAIDRS) project, DTB is a research effort to explore innovative methods of detecting threats and attacks on existing U.S. Air Force space assets, especially satellites that do not or cannot have dedicated sensors and other defense mechanisms.
• Genetic Imagery Exploitation (GENIE)—Development of customized spatio-spectral algorithms for a wide range of sensors (electro-optical, infrared, and other modalities) to process imagery for use in such areas as cartography, terrain classification, and medicine.
• Miniature Satellite Threat Reporting System (MSTRS)— Characterization of ground-based radio frequency (RF) emissions. This system protects a spacecraft from hostile RF by providing a detailed analysis of the threat, including the source of the threat.
• Pixel-based Multispectral Image Classification (POOKA)—Development of a reconfigurable computer-based system in combination with evolutionary algorithms to allow rapid prototyping of image and signal processing at the chip level to solve large-scale, broad-area search problems, to characterize land cover and terrain type, etc.

In addition, ISR-3 provides support to numerous projects in cooperation with other groups. These include:

• SABRS Validation Experiment (SAVE)—A proof of concept experiment to develop SABRS (Space and Atmospheric Burst Reporting System), which would detect nuclear events in space by detecting gamma rays, electrons, protons, and neutrons.
• Validation Sensor (V-Sensor)—A component within the Global Burst Detection payload to detect nuclear detonations with RF antennas, electronics, and algorithms.