Eye on outer space
Powerful detection telescope moving from NM to Australia
The estimated half-million pieces of “space junk” and roughly 2,200 man-made satellites circling the globe are a growing concern for the U.S. military, which increasingly views space as a “contested environment” where decisive battles in future wars could be fought.
“We no longer have the luxury of assuming that we’re operating in a benign environment ... or that conflict will only be on land or at sea or in the air,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Nina Armagno with Air Force Space Command, told a group of scientists Tuesday at White Sands Missile Range.
“Now, we must concern ourselves with a conflict that may extend into space,” she said.
Armagno was among a handful of speakers at a ceremony in which the $150 million Space Surveillance Telescope, or SST — a ground-breaking instrument capable of tracking 10,000 space objects at
a time — was formally transferred from the federal Defense Advanced Research Project Agency to the U.S. Air Force.
“It’s not often we get an opportunity to witness the beginning of an entirely new military capability,” Armagno told about 50 scientists, technicians and military personnel attending the event.
“SST fills a critical void ... in our current space surveillance network,” Armagno said. It also “give us the ability to optically search, detect, track and identify these space objects.”
The Air Force has already announced plans to move the surprisingly nimble 270,000-pound telescope to Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt in Exmouth, Western Australia, as part of the service’s efforts to improve “space situational awareness,” a term for the ability to view, track and understand natural and man-made objects in orbit around the Earth.
“From a military perspective, any one of those objects could put a satellite at risk,” Armagno said. “That’s why this capability is so important to us in Air Force Space Command.”
The new location will allow SST to scan the skies over the southern hemisphere — an area that is currently sparsely observed.
The SST will be jointly operated by Air Force Space Command and the Royal Australian Air Force, according to DARPA officials.
The Air Force catalogues all known orbiting objects through its Space Surveillance Network, an integrated system of ground- and space-based telescopes and radar.
As more and more satellites for commercial and military purposes are put into Earth’s various orbits, the potential for collisions with other satellites, space junk and asteroids is increasing. In fact, the International Space Station is routinely required to maneuver out of the way of space debris traveling at thousands of miles per hour.
The SST was developed for the Air Force by DARPA, the Department of Defense agency responsible for developing emerging technologies for use by the military, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. It sits atop 8,000-foot-high North Oscuro Peak at the northern edge of White Sands Missile Range.
Construction of the SST facilities at the former Army missile tracking site began in 2007, and the SST became operational on Feb. 12, 2011.
It’s a unique and massive piece of optical equipment. Unlike most optical telescopes which view a few large objects in a tiny portion of the night sky, SST offers a “windshield view” of thousands of faint objects at a time — some as small as a softball. It can search an area larger than the continental United States in seconds, and survey the entire geosynchronous belt within its field of view — about one quarter of the sky — multiple times in a single night.
The geosynchronous orbit that SST watches is about 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface. Objects in geosynchronous orbit essentially match the speed of Earth’s rotation, meaning they maintain the same position relative to Earth’s surface.
The SST camera shutter speed is so fast it can collect up to a half terabyte — or about a half trillion bytes — of data in a single night.
Last year, the SST observed 7.2 million objects in space, and DARPA expects it to observe as many as 10 million this year. SST has also “discovered 3,600 new asteroids and 69 near-Earth objects, including four that carry a risk of possibly hitting the Earth,” according to DARPA officials.
“By enabling much faster discovery and tracking of previously unseen or hard-to-find small space objects, this optical telescope is poised to revolutionize space situational awareness and help prevent potential collisions with satellites or the Earth itself,” said Lindsay Millard, DARPA program manager for SST.
The telescope, which will be disassembled and shipped by boat, is expected to reach initial operating capability sometime in 2020, Millard said.
FROM A MILITARY PERSPECTIVE, ANY ONE OF THOSE OBJECTS COULD PUT A SATELLITE AT RISK. THAT’S WHY THIS CAPABILITY IS SO IMPORTANT TO US IN AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND. AIR FORCE MAJ. GEN. NINA ARMAGNO