NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] Space business has developed and begun operating a new test bed to test and prove out new operating concepts for satellites and data analytics to retire risk and increase efficiencies, the company said this week.
The Operations Center of the Future opened in the spring and is being used to fly the company’s In-Space Upgrade Satellite System Demonstrator, proving how a pair of cubesats that are demonstrating how small satellites can be upgraded with new capabilities.
The test bed will also be used to manage and control several satellite missions Lockheed Martin is planning later this year and in 2024, including the Pony Express 2 and TacSat, Robert Lightfoot, executive president for Lockheed Martin’s Space segment, told
Defense Daily on Wednesday during the Air Force Association’s Air Space Cyber symposium here.
The testbed will also be used to control a demonstration mission of Lockheed Martin’s LM 400 mid-size satellite bus will be launched to prove out processors and other work the company is doing, he said.
The Pony Express 2 follows an earlier nanosatellite mission and will demonstrate mesh networking and tactical communications. TacSat will host a 5G.MIL payload for on-orbit processing, ISR sensing, and advanced communications.
Two missions are expected to be launched this year and one in 2024.
Typically, each asset would have its own operating team, but the Operations Center of the Future will allow management and control by a single team, he said.
The upcoming tests will retire more risk in the operations center and for the satellite missions and further mature the technologies, he said.
Lockheed Martin will showcase the test bed to its customers for what they can potentially do.
“Lockheed Martin believes this test bed center can model how customers, like the U.S. Space Force, can showcase their satellite operations, and possibly even NASA too,” he said.
Bringing in operators to control satellites and work with the data streams coming from the spacecraft will give them a “feel for how that operation works” and prepare them for use of these capabilities in a routine operation, he said.
The Operations Center of the Future will also apply artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to turn the vast amounts of data from the different satellites into intelligence, whether that relates to spacecraft diagnostics or a mission, Lightfoot said. The test bed will give time for Lockheed Martin to “build trust in the algorithms” and the center overall, he said.