Space situational awareness upgrades


http://www.afa.org/magazine/June2006/0606space.pdf

Space and Counterspace
by John A. Tirpak
Air Force Magazine
June 2006, pp. 42-46
[EXCERPT]

For now, the Air Force is focused on the space situational awareness
aspect and has a number of programs under way that will sharply
increase its knowledge of what's going on in orbit.

· Space Fence: Previously known as the Navy Fence [aka NAVSPASUR],
the Air Force took over this program in 2004. (See "Aerospace World:
Air Force Takes Over Navy Fence," December 2004, p. 20.) The Space
Fence is an array of dispersed radars that track satellites as they
pass over the United States. The Air Force is planning a $275 million
upgrade over the next five years that will convert the system to S-band
radar, allowing greater search capability and faster revisit times. It
also will sharpen the resolution of the radar, so that it can see
objects from a current minimum of 12 inches in size down to two inches
in size. The radars themselves will be distributed over a wider
geographical area, giving a better view of the horizon. They will be
able to see beyond low earth orbit (LEO) to medium Earth orbit (MEO).
Grundman said the old hardware likely will be retired around 2011,
because "it's reaching some sustainability limits."

· Space-Based Surveillance System: Planned to be a constellation of
five satellites, the SBSS would operate in LEO to look at satellites
and other objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), at about 26,000
miles from the Earth's surface. SBSS builds on a missile defense
experiment [MSX] launched in 1996 that looked for ballistic missiles
using a visible and an infrared sensor. The IR sensor quit after 18
months, but the visible sensor has continued to function, now for
almost 10 years, as proof of concept for a space-based sensor. However,
Grundman said, "We think it's probably going to run out of life at
any time." A Block 10 version of the SBSS is to be ready to fly in
2009. It will be a "risk reducer" for the objective system-the
remaining four satellites-which should be launched between 2013 and
2014. The SBSS will be a visible-spectrum telescope. It will "help us
find things" at GEO and MEO "that we don't already know about,"
Grundman noted, as well as "keep track of things up there that we do
know about, and to get more frequent revisit on them." The SBSS will
be able to survey an area of interest "a few times a day as opposed
to every few days."

· RAIDRS: The Rapid Attack Identification Detection and Reporting
System is not a satellite, but a "hybrid architecture" of sensors,
comm links, and data processing systems intended to analyze the data
from satellites and determine if they are being affected by some
external force, Grundman explained. "It's a data situational awareness
system" that analyzes the data received at satellite downlinks.
RAIDRS detects electromagnetic interference on satellites; "in other
words, it's looking tosee if our commsats are being jammed by
others." Spiral 1 also will be able to pinpoint the source of the
jamming. By 2010, full operational capability will be 32 ground-based,
deployable RAIDRS with broad capability to analyze radio frequency
energy across many bands. Grundman noted that interference or jamming
may not always be a hostile act. "It's not that uncommon that we
end up interfering with our own communications, sometimes," he noted.
However, it's important to find a jamming signal and stop it, no
matter the source. Spiral 2 will have more data fusion and more
automated connections with space command and control systems.

.

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