Two Missile Defense Agency prototype satellites and four U.S. Space Force missile tracking satellites were launched into orbit from Florida's Space Coast on Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
These satellites are a new generation designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China and Russia, and possibly new missile threats from Iran and North Korea, which are developing their own hypersonic weapons. part of the spaceship.
Hypersonic missiles are smaller and more maneuverable than traditional ballistic missiles, and can be detected by the U.S. military's legacy missile defense satellites as they launch. Infrared sensors on the military's older generation missile-tracking satellites are tuned to detect bright heat signatures from missile exhaust gases.
new threat paradigm
Hypersonic missiles pose new challenges for the Space Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). First, ballistic missiles fly into space on predictable parabolic trajectories. Hypersonic missiles are small, relatively dark, and spend a lot of time in the Earth's atmosphere. Their maneuverability makes them difficult to track.
A five-year-old military organization called the Space Development Agency (SDA) launched 27 spacecraft last year to prove the Pentagon's vision of placing hundreds of small, relatively low-cost spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. launched a prototype satellite. This new constellation of satellites, which SDA calls the “proliferation fighter space architecture,” will eventually number hundreds of spacecraft, tracking missiles and relaying data about their flight paths back to the ground. Tracking data provides early warning to hypersonic missile targets and helps interceptors generate firing solutions to shoot down hypersonic missiles.
The SDA constellation combines traditional tactical radio links, laser intersatellite communications, and wide-field infrared sensors. The agency, now part of the Space Force, plans to launch successive generations, or tranches, of small satellites that incorporate new technologies. The SDA approach relies on off-the-shelf spacecraft and sensor technology, which makes it more resilient to enemy attacks than the military's traditional space assets. These legacy military satellites often cost hundreds of millions or billions of dollars each, and architectures that rely on a small number of large satellites make them a sitting duck for adversaries looking to do damage. It may look like.
Four of the Missile Defense Agency's smaller SDA satellites and two larger spacecraft were aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket when they launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:30 p.m. ET (2230 UTC) Wednesday. It was installed on.
The rocket headed northeast from Cape Canaveral and placed six payloads into low Earth orbit. Space Force officials declared the launch a success late Wednesday night.
SDA's four tracking satellites, manufactured by L3Harris, are the last spacecraft that SDA will launch in a fleet of prototype satellites known as Tranche 0. SDA plans to begin a rapid-fire launch campaign in collaboration with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance later this year. Approximately 150 satellites will be deployed, with launches occurring at monthly intervals to rapidly build an operational Tranche 1 constellation. Next comes her Tranche 2 constellation with more advanced sensor technology.
The primary payload on board Wednesday's launch was for the Missile Defense Agency. These two Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites, one provided by L3Harris and the other by Northrop Grumman, demonstrate medium-field-of-view sensors. Although these sensors cannot cover as extensive an area as SDA satellites, they provide more sensitive and detailed missile tracking data.
