By B.C. Kessner
The commander of the Air Force Space Command recently said it was closing in on an interim goal of being able to track over 1,000 objects in space, something that could happen by the end of next month and a number beyond what many were expecting.
“I’m very encouraged that we’ll be able to get all of the maneuvering platforms, and then all of the active platforms sometime right after that,” Gen. Robert Kehler, the commander of Air Force Space Command, told reporters during a press briefing at the annual Air Force Association conference at National Harbor.
“We’re closing in on our goal of being able to track well over 1,000. We hope to get there around the October timeframe and it looks like we will be able to do just that,” Kehler said.
The command has been making steady progress and added both cueing power and analysts to help systems make recommendations on collision avoidance and increasing the number of objects it can actively track.
There are an estimated 800 active platforms in orbit that can actively maneuver, but Kehler said tracking those was never an end goal, but a waypoint. It was a number put out to be able to track by the end of October, but the command had always hoped to get beyond that, he added.
There are about 200 other active satellites that are not maneuvering, but Kehler cautioned against getting too focused on numbers that can change. He said the intent is to get “more active” first on everything that has the ability to maneuver, to have a more constant vigilance on those, and then the active satellites that may be not capable of maneuvering, and then debris and other small objects.
To track smaller objects, Kehler said the command needed to incorporate other data sources and get some new sensors. “That’s why we’re hoping that…we’ll see the launch of Space-Based Surveillance Satellite (SBSS)…in the October-ish timeframe,” he added.
Boeing [BA] is standing by to ship the satellite, Marc Johansen, the company’s vice president, Space, Intelligence & Missile Defense Systems, said during a separate press briefing at the conference last week. “It’s ready to go and we’re standing by…it looks like the vehicle and the satellite will get together toward the end of October,” Johansen said.
The launch via Orbital Sciences‘ [ORB] Minotaur IV rocket will take place at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
Kehler said the SSBS launch timing was not so much dependent on the satellite or the launch vehicle, but more a factor of the overall launch flow as the Air Force tries to work its way through a backlog. “We’re pretty confident that that will go, now that doesn’t help us with object size, but that’s the first of a number of sensor improvements that we’ll begin to see.”
Johansen said that SBSS is starting to realize the long-standing dream of a deep space surveillance system that would be much more capable than traditional ground based satellite surveillance methods often blocked by weather conditions.
“The idea with this is that we have a gimbaled aperture…a charge-coupling device visible sensor that enables you to track something at a certain altitude in the geosynchronous belt, then pop down and go to a MEO [Mid-Earth Orbit] or any other altitude, it’s a very efficient system,” Johansen said.
Ball Aerospace [BLL] is a major partner with Boeing on SBSS.
Johansen said the satellite operations center at Schriever AFB, Colo., has gone through full mission testing and dress rehearsals and that everything is looking good in preparation for the launch. It has been a long road leading to SSBS, starting with Pathfinder, then the MSX experiment showing the capability putting sensors into space, he added.
“The Air Force is debating on the next steps…we do have a paper out from SMC [Space and Missile Systems Center] and the Air Force right now that is a sources-sought kind of pre-RFI considering different ways of going ahead on what would be the follow on to this system,” Johansen said. “I think a lot of eyes will be opened, including this one in space, when it’s launched and we’re all excited about this launch coming up very soon.”
Kehler said SSBS is part of a progressive set of increments that the Air Force is trying to add. “Eventually we’d even like to get larger and we’ve got the plans in place to do it, a commitment to [satellites that] maneuver, everything active, and then take our breath and see where we’ll go from there,” he added.