Tactical Spacecraft Commanding Service Architecture

he application of tactical spacecraft or satellite constellations in support of warfighters has tremendous benefit in a dynamic battlefield environment. Today warfighters must queue behind a long list of higher-priority requests and wait for scarce opportunity to access space-based assets. By the time the information collected becomes available, it is often obsolete and has little tactical value. The effectiveness of ground spacecraft operations to respond quickly in a high-tempo, high-intensity situation is limited. A missing element to the success of these dynamic operations is the timely access, tasking, planning, and commanding of space-based sensors. The Tactical Spacecraft Commanding Service Architecture (TSCSA) emerged from an independent research and development effort to develop a prototype capability that will explore a fundamentally new way to access, task, and receive information from tactical spacecraft assets; it is based on the notion of a distributed, semiautomated planning and scheduling framework built using a serviceoriented architecture and current Web-service standards. The TSCSA will present tactical spacecraft sensing assets as an abstract service to potential warfighting clients.