A recent $1 million government contract will help Albuquerque-based Verus Research continue advancing the research and development company's satellite-based software technology.
J. Mark DelGrande, Verus Research's chief technology officer, said the contract — a phase-two Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, agreement between Verus and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate — "solidifies" the company's position in fault detection software, particularly for what DelGrande called "satellite anomalies."
That software technology is called Sat-SAM, or Satellite Software for Anomaly Monitoring. DelGrande said Verus Research, an advanced science and technology research and development company, has worked with AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate for "a number of years" on developing the tech.
Verus' latest STTR agreement is for the next iteration of the software, which uses satellite telemetry data to run analysis that can "detect, identify and predict causal indicators for failures and anomalies," per an April 16 release from the company.
Satellites rely on ground operators to monitor their condition and guard against threats.
"If you have to continue to have operators monitoring all these satellites in space, it becomes intractable," DelGrande said. "So can we incorporate artificial intelligence, machine learning, to allow software to take off some of the load?"
DelGrande said developing Sat-SAM is a "major strategic thrust" for Verus Research. The Albuquerque company is working with the University of Colorado Boulder on research into model-based identification algorithms used in the satellite software.
After advancing the technology through the STTR agreement to prepare it for implementation in space, the software will run on AFRL's Navigation Technology Satellite-3, or NTS-3, on a flight experiment planned later this year, per Verus' April 16 release.
"The [Small Business Innovation Research] and STTRs that we do are typically used as seedlings to grow the technology to a maturity level that allows the actual employment of these concepts to occur on our other larger contracts," DelGrande said.
He added that the end goal with Sat-SAM is to integrate the software directly with satellites in space rather than only with ground stations so that satellites can detect potential faults or anomalies and take corrective actions before they occur.
Verus Research in May 2023 received a $203 million ceiling increase on a U.S. Army contract, making it the company's largest single contract award to date.
Since that ceiling increase, DelGrande said Verus has landed a few other awards. One is a five-year, $28 million contract under the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation for a technology called ANKST, or Airborne Non-Kinetic Systems for Test, which is related to high-power microwave testing and evaluation.
It's also landed a two-year, $15.6 million contract for another high-power microwave test capability under the Naval Research Laboratory in conjunction with the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Patuxent River.
Verus employs around 140 people, DelGrande said, the "vast majority" of whom are in Albuquerque. The company has nine full-time positions and six intern positions posted on its website currently.
