Help
It’s getting crowded up there
April 3rd, 2009 | Uncategorized | Posted by Michael Hoffman
More than 19,000 man-made objects circle Earth with that number growing each day.
Put simply: It’s getting crowded up there.
The problem didn’t gain much exposure until the Chinese anti-satellite demonstration in 2007 and more recently in mid-March when debris came dangerously close to hitting the International Space Station. The near-miss came less than a month after an inactive Russian satellite slammed into a U.S. commercial satellite — obliterating both and adding more debris into orbit.
Now, the leaders are keenly sensitive to the increased risks posed by debris and the Air Force is working to predict space collisions by doing what it calls conjunction analysis. Right now, the service can do conjunction analysis on about 330 active U.S. satellites and intends to up that number to 800 by October, said Col. Dusty Tyson, chief of the Air Force’s space control division.
Tyson and experts addressed space debris at a breakout session of the 25th National Space Symposium held here the week of March 30.
The military’s top leaders and the space industry’s top executives have sat down each of the last six years to discuss how they can cooperate better to improve surveillance. The most recent meeting took place March 24 at the Pentagon between Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, U.S. Strategic Command commander Gen. Kevin Chilton, Air Force Space Command commander Gen. Robert Kehler and the chief executive officers of the top 10 commercial satellite companies.
The Air Force initiated the meetings with the hope of building a public-private partnership that would allow the sharing of data to increase space situational awareness.
Both camps are upfront about needing each other: The military needs better data about the satellites in orbit, most of them commercial. And private industry needs the Air Force to crunch the numbers and to give direction on how to prevent space collisions.
Intelsat is considering whether to put government sensors on its 50-plus commercial satellites that would send data to the Air Force, said Richard DalBello, a vice president for the global communications company.
For the Air Force, the goal is to create a picture for space objects somewhat similar to the picture that the Federal Aviation Association uses to track aircraft, said Lt. Gen. Larry James, commander of 14th Air Force under Air Force Space Command.
The space objects picture wouldn’t have to be monitored 24/7 like the aircraft picture, though, because most of the 19,000 objects floating above East don’t deviate much from orbit. Analysts can often accurately predict their orbit and their location now and in the future, James said.
“I think we are moving down that path with space-based systems and linking in sensors that aren’t in the network,” James said. “Ideally if you have a sensor that is radiating energy in space that’s collecting data I’d like to have that data come into the [Joint Space Operations Center based at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.].”
James thinks the Air Force needs to do is continue such programs as Space Fence and the Space Based Space Surveillance, or SBSS, satellite constellation, which should have been up and running by now but was delayed after a February launch failure.
The Air Force uses Space Fence, or the AN/FPS-133 Surveillance Fence Radar, which uses ground stations to track objects in space. The Navy used to oversee Space Fence but transferred the responsibility to the Air Force in 2004. The service now tracks space objects at the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg.
SBSS will improve the Air Force’s ability to track objects because it won’t be affected by weather or geography, James said. Instead, the space-based sensor will allow analysts to track any object any time including satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is above low Earth orbit.
The Air Force isn’t stopping at SBSS. It’s also designing an updated version Space Fence that could be installed by 2015, said Gary Payton, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs. He said the new radar could dramatically increase how many objects the Air Force can see in orbit.
“We might look up there and see 120,000 objects instead of 19,000,” he said.
However, as space surveillance improves Air Force Space Command is going to need more airmen to comb through the increasing streams of data, James said. He’s confident airmen are up to the task.
“We have some of the best airmen working in Space Command and keep improving our space expertise. This will be a challenge but the Air Force and our airmen are up to it.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.