Maritime domain awareness with commercially accessible electro-optical sensors in space

Comprehensive maritime domain awareness includes detection, tracking, and identification of vessels, and we describe work concerned with the detection and tracking elements of this problem. Millions of maritime vessels operate without the means for their positions to be independently tracked, presenting a problem for safety and security of life at sea. To date, visible wavelength imaging from space has been of limited use for vessel detection and tracking due to poor area coverage provided by individual satellites. This situation is now changing. We present a survey of currently operating spacecraft carrying electro-optical imagers offering adequate imaging resolution and commercial data availability. We model the coverage provided by 54 satellites and 85 sensors over a target area to assess the value of these assets for space-based maritime domain awareness. The results show that useful levels of coverage can now be obtained through the collective observations of existing spacecraft, although on-board resources will limit the amount of imagery that can be acquired. The launch of large numbers of high-resolution imaging nanosatellites produced by private companies will improve this coverage, and the increasing capability of small satellite platforms offers the possibility of a dedicated Electro-Optical Space-Based Maritime Domain Awareness constellation that can realise the full benefit of the concept. We propose a cooperative approach, based on cloud computing and crowdsourcing philosophies, to the operation of the ground segment and the sharing and analysis of image data, to create an effective constellation of satellites and associated data handling infrastructure that can be used to enhance maritime security, and improve the safety of lives at sea.