Slingshot Adds AI Maneuver Advice to Space Portal

According to Slingshot Aerospace, more than 16,600 spacecraft are operating in orbit, and the company is adding a new decision layer to the system watching them. Its Portal platform will use TALOS AI to help operators decide what to do—and how to maneuver—when a collision risk emerges.

Portal opened for business in April as an AI-powered service for monitoring assets in low Earth orbit, spotting anomalies and detecting potential collisions in one place. In just four months, its customer base has grown to 630+ users, representing 330 industry and government organizations in 19 countries.

The update adds more than maneuver advice. Users can request extremely precise tracking data on a particular object, while Slingshot can determine whether its sensor network needs to gather missing data on a spacecraft of interest. Portal Marketplace will also provide on-demand processing and analytics.

The mechanism is straightforward: more orbital objects create more data to sort, compare and act on. Robin Dickey, Slingshot’s director of policy and government affairs, said operators will not be able to “process and deconflict and make decisions fast enough for the real world” without AI as the volume grows. She made the comments at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

So what, concretely? Operators using Portal can move from detecting a possible collision to receiving guidance on a response, while requesting more precise information when the available tracking data is incomplete. The announcement describes new capabilities being added to a platform already used by customers; it does not establish how often the recommendations will prevent collisions in operational conditions.