Dr. Moriba Jah, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, past navigator for many missions to Mars, and space situational awareness expert returns to the Cold Star Project. With host Jason Kanigan, Dr. Jah digs deeper into the challenges of space object identification, tracking and orbital prediction, including:

• Why is it a problem that satellite orbit pathing predictions assume a spheroid shape? What issues does this create?


• What can we do to improve the predictive ability of satellite pathing calculations? Why do we need to improve this accuracy--what’s the rush, what’s driving this need?


• What is the technology behind space traffic management: what era is it from, and how does it work? Who operates it?


• What would a better system look like, and who should operate it?


• Why was the Two Line Element format chosen? What’s wrong with TLEs?


• It’s my understanding from speaking with our colleagues, primarily the British, that more information is available or even broadcast, but some is truncated to fit in the TLE format. Why is this done?


• In my own research, I found a Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems blue book from 2009, updated in 2012. From there I went on to the CCSDS website. Thinking is clearly done on the topic: why, then, is (from the outsider’s perspective, at any rate) the pace of change glacial?


• What would a modern satellite data communication system look like? How many lines would you recommend? What would this additional data transmission enable us to do or know?


• In the past year space situational awareness and space domain awareness have finally been getting more of the attention it deserves. What else needs to happen to gain the energy to make change and the funding required to do so?   

Previous interview on the Cold Star Project with Dr. Jah: https://coldstarproject.com/auS02E11MoribaJah   

Wikipedia page on Dr. Jah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriba_Jah  

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