Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2019-07-01
Buyer: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR)
Country: DE
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 72230000: Custom software development services
Estimated value: 170000 EUR
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: The ‘Optical Data Processing Software’ shall be used in order to upgrade the link in the processing chain between the operation of passive optical sensors and the subsequent processing chain. The software shall extract celestial coordinates of observed space objects from images (FITS) and generate tracklets thereof. As a first processing step the software shall perform photometric reduction. The second processing step shall perform source extraction and astrometric reduction in order to identify space objects in Earth's orbit. Once the celestial coordinates of an object of interest have been extracted, these shall be merged to tracklets. A further function shall be included in order to identify and process light-curves of a space object based on rapid consecutive subframe images.
The ‘Optical Data Processing Software’ shall be able to process images of SST telescopes to generate tracklets. Images are provided in the common Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) Standard with relevant observational parameters stored in the FITS-header. At data ingestion the software shall check the information stored in the FITS file for plausible content with the possibility to correct apparent erroneous data if necessary.
As a first processing step the Software shall perform photometric reduction. Therefore, the images shall be processed in order to increase the Signal-to-Noise ratio and enhance the image quality caused by unfavourable observation conditions and hardware related issues. Different reasons and effects to be considered are the read-out noise of the amplifier and the thermal noise, sensitivity variations and deficient pixel on the CCD chip. Also the background of the images shall be corrected as this can vary significantly based on e.g. lighting conditions (moon, street lights) which leads to fading objects. These single processing functions shall be configurable to be enabled/disabled by the User depending on aforementioned quality deficits.
The second processing step shall perform source extraction and astrometric reduction in order to identify space objects in Earth's orbit. Based on the quality of the pointing model and calibration of the sensor, the apparent angles (RA, DEC) provided with each images differ from the real position on the sky background. Hence, depending on the observation strategy and exposure time, the stars have to be identified and so all artefacts can be extracted from the image. The celestial coordinates of space objects shall be identified by means of plate solving with common star catalogues (UCAC4, Gaia, etc.) and astrometric reduction. Also possible identification of false objects caused by cosmic ray effects shall be avoided. A further function shall be included in order to identify and process light-curves of a space object based on rapid consecutive subframe images.
As a third step, once the celestial coordinates of an object of interest have been extracted, these shall be merged to tracklets. The tracklets shall be stored in the tracking data message format, which can be used for further processing in the cataloguing process. Before the celestial coordinates of consecutive images are merged to tracklets, light-time corrections shall be considered. Furthermore, diurnal and annual aberration shall be corrected as well as deviations because of precession and nutation of the Earth’s axis.
The software shall be able to automatically process data in near real-time and adapt to accumulated data rate and common observation strategies (e.g. non-sidereal tracking) as well as to different ground-based observation systems (e g. network functionality, multiple sources).
The German Space Situational Awareness Centre (GSSAC) operates passive optical sensors in context with a proprietary mission system. The ‘Optical Data Processing Software’ will be part of this mission system and therefore has to interface with the existing components of that system.


Award value: 170000