Establishing Modern Software Processes for Satellite Data Computing Laboratory

The United States Space Force’s Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) Tools, Applications, and Processing (TAP) Lab in Boulder, Colo., helps software developers build national defense tools that use satellite data. In 2024, SEI researchers helped the lab incorporate modern software development processes within its high-security environments.

Commercial software development teams mine the lab’s satellite feeds to create mission applications, such as orbital object detectors, and test them with Space Force operators. The computing platforms support unclassified and classified work while also providing an open architecture for developers. While the setup fostered collaboration across external development teams, the mixed-classification environment provided a challenge for software delivery. But there was help on the way.

The SEI’s long partnerships with industry and government, as well as a history of software process improvements, made it the right fit to support this challenge. SEI experts in software engineering, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and cybersecurity applied their expertise to the lab, designing well-architected end-to-end DevSecOps pipelines, creating modern workflows, facilitating training sessions, and recommending Agile method implementations to further enhance the lab’s external development teams.

These process improvements will ultimately allow the Space Force to quickly integrate new data-processing capabilities.