The University of Texas at Austin is set to become the first academic institution to work directly with the U.S. Space Force to detect, analyze and counter threats in space to U.S. national security in near-real time. A seed fund grant from the Texas Space Commission will establish a Space Domain Awareness (SDA) Tools, Applications, and Processing (TAP) Lab, which 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 TAP SAP 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, including the Texas Advanced Computing Center. 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.
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.
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.
