Sustainable Space

Sustainable Space

Worldwide we rely on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) placed in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) for vital economic and societal activity, including banking, transport, connectivity and security sectors. Today there are around 4,500 active satellites in LEO, around 30,000 defunct satellites and many 1000s of orbiting space debris objects. ThinkTank Maths in partnership with exceptional organisations is engaged in the greatest adventure of mankind: ensuring the sustainable use and exploration of Space.

The 5-year conservative forecast sees the number of orbiting satellites soar to over 120,000. In the UK alone 11.3% of GDP in key sectors are supported directly by these systems and it is estimated that these systems support a further £300 bn of the wider UK economic activity. There is a recognised technology gap requiring the development of enhanced Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) services – trusted monitoring and alert systems that give more accurate insight into the position of a satellite and the other objects on its orbital plane and surrounding environment to prevent the collision these space-objects on orbit.  Reliable SST capability is essential to safeguard economic continuity and our National security.

ThinkTank Maths is collaborating with SaxaVord Spaceport and Dr. Moriba Jah, world expert and thought leader in Space Domain Awareness (SDA) as the newly formed SaxaVord SDA Consortium. The Consortium aims to provide commercial and Government clients assured Space Traffic Management collision alert services – an end-to-end space domain decision intelligence platform giving actionable insight at the speed of relevance. ThinkTank Maths’ novel mathematical methods will reduce space object position and orbital uncertainty. Our Trusted Reasoning Architecture (TRA™) fuses vast heterogenous data sets and is the intelligent digital core of ARGUSGraph, our SDA digital platform. The SaxaVord SDA Consortium is pursuing partnerships with organisations that can provide multi-modal sensing (e.g. active, passive, EO, RF, multi-spectral) to detect, track, and characterise space objects.  The Consortium will concurrently offer a range of launch support services to the New Space industry.

Thinktank Maths’ intelligent control systems will allow spacecraft to explore the farthest reaches of the Solar System and enable satellite constellations to observe Earth with less human supervision and more autonomy. However, we expect more from space exploration than just exciting technical challenges. It will continue to force the creation of  intelligent mathematical frameworks and have an immense impact on life here on Earth.

 

Our fundamental mathematical work on rocket plume dynamics and spacecraft testing will allow future missions to fly safely. We are also challenging conventional engineering of planet re-entry in a way that will make entirely new mission concepts possible.

Case Studies