STORM

Storm Tracking On-orbit using RFS with complementary MOS

Program: NASA SBIR Phase I, Contract No. 80NSSC24PB215
Prime: ASTER Labs
Dates: Jan. 2025 – May 2025
Role: Graduate research contributor (LAGER)

Python GGIW RFS LEO CMOS sensor SBIR

Overview

STORM developed a low-compute LEO region-of-interest (ROI) tracker for lightning observations collected by a CMOS sensor. The tracker ran as part of an on-orbit pipeline intended for resource-constrained spacecraft.

Technical Approach

Formulated lightning clusters as extended targets and applied GGIW-based ROI tracking.
Designed the filter to stay within tight compute/memory budgets expected on a small LEO platform.
Delivered integration-ready modules for the prime contractor's in-house Python codebase.

Outcomes

Phase I deliverables met; modules handed off to ASTER Labs for integration.
Demonstrated that GGIW ROI tracking remains tractable on the target compute envelope.
TODO: add representative results plot once cleared for public release.

Related Work

BREW — shares the underlying GGIW formulation.
Doctoral research on LEO distributed multi-extended-target tracking builds directly on STORM.