NEW ORLEANS – Defense Department satellite operators will soon have a new tool to determine whether space weather was the likely cause of an on-orbit anomaly.
Space Weather Analysis and Forecast System (SWAFS) 2.0, a cloud-based platform, will be released for operational use in March or April, U.S. Air Force Col. Todd Blum, chief of the U.S. Space Force Environmental Monitoring Operations Branch, said Jan. 13 at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting here.
Drawing on space weather observations, SWAFS 2.0 will help operators evaluate on-orbit anomalies, communications interference and false-echo returns for radar systems. It also will help military organizations calculate errors in position, navigation and timing data.
At previous weather conferences, Air Force officials have discussed how difficult it is to determine whether a satellite anomaly was harmed by a micrometeoroid strike, space weather or something else.
“We want to speed up the time from when the event happens to making such a decision,” Blum told SpaceNews.
To use SWAFS 2.0, operators will input information on the location of satellites or ground stations and their communications frequency. Then, SWAFS 2.0 will quickly determine whether interference “could be caused by the natural environment or some other intentional or unintentional jamming,” Blum said.
The SWAFS 2.0 dashboard is designed to be tailored for specific missions.
Peraton, prime contractor for SWAFS 2.0, also calls the platform Space Environment Toolkit for Defense, or SET4D.
