Washington DC (SPX) Jan 14, 2022 The Space Development Agency will be fielding satellites that will...
The Space Development Agency will be fielding satellites that will provide eyes-on capability to detect maneuverable hypersonic glide vehicles during flight, and those satellites will be affordable and prolific, the SDA director said.
Speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies' Schriever Spacepower Forum, Derek Tournear said satellites in low-Earth orbit, or LEO, will make up the tracking layer that will be able to detect hypersonic threats by their heat signatures, eventually on a global scale.
Satellites in LEO can detect those dim heat signatures better than satellites in higher orbits, he added.
If there are several satellites doing the tracking, getting a geometric fix on a hypersonic threat is much more precise.
SDA is working in two-year cycles to leverage spiral development of new technologies and launch additional satellites in tranches in that timeframe going forward, he said.
The commercial sector has enabled the growth of this military capability as the prices of satellites and rocket launches have plummeted and as technology has dramatically improved, he said.
Addressing concerns about overcrowding space with satellites, Tournear said space is big, and the higher one goes up in low-Earth orbit, the more room there is.
There's currently a lot of satellite congestion in the 400- to 600-kilometer area above the Earth, he said.
SDA is looking to place its satellites in the 1,000- to 1,200-kilometer range.
The goal of putting a large number of small satellites in space, he said, is to create redundancy in the event an adversary tries to take them out with anti-satellite weapons.