A USSF radome receives data from satellites at Kaena Point Space Force Station, Hawaii, on 14 September 2022. (US Space Force)

Programme officials at the US Space Force (USSF) are in the midst of standing up a new data gateway to allow space-based collection platforms to access and transmit legacy data previously inaccessible by current USSF systems.

USSF’s Space Systems Command (SSC) awarded Virginia-based data integration company Raft a USD2.9 million other transaction authority (OTA) deal in April to develop the new application programming interface (API) gateway for service intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems.

The new API gateway, once mature, is designed to be an “enhancement tool that expands data accessibility and enables interoperability”, according to a USSF statement.

Specifically, the new gateway will allow access for USSF assets into the service’s Unified Data Library (UDL). Officially coming online in 2019, the UDL is a “cloud-based, multiclassification repository” for operational data on space-based objects collected from commercial and military satellites, service officials explained in the statement.

While the collection side of the UDL effort continues apace, “many producers of [UDL] data … have legacy data messaging formats that cannot be read by modern API endpoints, making much of this data unusable”, according to USSF officials. The new API gateway under development will translate data from legacy formats into ones that can be read by current systems equipped with “modern API endpoints”, the statement said.

This data translation will be executed automatically, via the new API gateway tool, “thus making data more accessible, available, and usable for military purposes at the speed of need”, service officials added in the statement.

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