UT To Enhance U.S. Space Force Detection, Response to Security Threats

The University of Texas at Austin is set to become the first university to receive funding from the Texas Space Commission. The seed fund grant will establish a Space Domain Awareness (SDA) Tools, Applications, and Processing (TAP) Lab, the first built on an academic foundation, and will pair the private sector with UT’s leading research expertise and computing power to augment national security.

Space domain awareness involves monitoring objects orbiting the Earth, including tracking and cataloging both active and inactive satellites and fragmented debris from rockets and “space junk,” but most importantly, threats from adversaries. Moriba Jah, lead researcher on the grant, defines threats as anything with the “intent, opportunity and capability to cause harm” to space assets such as telecommunications satellites or spacecraft.

“The SDA TAP Lab anchors Texas within the national space security defense research ecosystem,” said Jah, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics. “This effort allows us to develop and rigorously test scalable analytic methods to detect and track objects in orbit, then provide those capabilities to operational partners.”

UT’s SDA TAP Lab will operate in coordination with the existing SDA TAP Lab in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is privately operated. The extension of the SDA TAP framework to an academic setting will provide unprecedented access to UT’s research, interdisciplinary expertise and high-performance computing systems.

The lab will leverage UT’s leading academic computing power at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). This will enable secure processing of large-scale orbital datasets, simulation of complex orbital behaviors, and evaluation of space domain awareness algorithms at an unprecedented scale for the space community.

"Over the past several years, our collaboration with TACC has centered on building the computational backbone required for modern Space Domain Awareness," Jah said.  

Through the ASTRIAGraph project, Jah and colleagues have been leveraging TACC resources to fuse heterogeneous data streams, perform large-scale state estimation experiments, and prototype agentic AI systems that reduce the uncertainty of the complex environment of hundreds of thousands of objects orbiting Earth.

TACC’s Corral storage system supports Jah's efforts to manage and curate large volumes of observational data from ground-based sensors and space-based assets. "Data stewardship is foundational," he added. "You cannot build trustworthy decision systems in space security without disciplined data engineering and scalable compute."

Over the past several years, our collaboration with TACC has centered on building the computational backbone required for modern Space Domain Awareness.

As the SDA TAP Lab is established, TACC will serve as the high performance computing engine that allows the researchers to test new state estimation frameworks, quantify uncertainty, and simulate complex orbital scenarios at scale. 

“We are moving beyond traditional point-estimate tracking toward bounded, possibilistic representations of what is physically and operationally plausible. That requires both computational depth and architectural flexibility. TACC provides both, enabling us to experiment at the scale of the problem,” Jah said.

SDA TAP Lab Texas will emphasize research, prototyping, benchmarking, and workforce development, pairing industry partners with UT Austin’s academic strengths to accelerate the maturation of space domain awareness tools.

The lab will also serve as a multidisciplinary training environment for students across engineering, computer science, policy, law and business. Students will work directly with industry and government partners on mission-relevant problems, contributing to tool development, performance evaluation, and decision-support research while gaining experience aligned with national security needs.

“The expansion of the SDA TAP Lab into Texas represents a significant step forward for the Space Force and for the state,” said Gwen Griffin, chair of the Texas Space Commission board. “SDA TAP Lab Texas brings together academic research, industry innovation and advanced computing in a way that strengthens national defense and long-term space resilience.”

The seed funding of $9.3 million from the Texas Space Commission’s Space Exploration & Aeronautics Research Fund will support lab construction, research and development, and up to six cohort cycles of industry teams to develop technologies aligned with U.S. Space Force priorities.

Data stewardship is foundational.

SDA TAP Lab Texas will begin operations immediately, with initial cohorts helping shape the research agenda and technical capabilities. As the first higher education institution to receive the grant, UT continues to position itself as a driving force of the space industry expansion in Texas and vital to operational capabilities for national defense.

In an era captivated by raw processing speed and ever-larger machines, it is tempting to believe that more computational power automatically means more security. It does not, according to Jah. 

“Security emerges from how that power is used: to clarify what we truly know, to illuminate what remains uncertain, and to distinguish evidence from assumption before action is taken,” Jah said. “When advanced computing is paired with rigorous uncertainty quantification and transparent reasoning frameworks, it does more than sharpen detection or accelerate response. It builds trust. It strengthens decision-making. And in the fragile orbital commons, it fosters the stability and long-term sustainability on which we all depend.”

Adapted from a press release by The University of Texas at Austin.