Defense contractor Raytheon and the United States Air Force have inked a preliminary design review contract for the development and piloting of a new space debris tracking system. Called Space Fence, the system will provide collision early warnings for thousands of satellites currently in various orbits around the earth. Raytheon won the contract over its rival Lockheed Martin who had proposed a similar system.
The current Air Force Space Surveillance System is in major need for replacement. Built in 1961, it consists of three transmitters and six receivers based in the southern US and is capable of detecting debris as small as 10 cm up to 15,000 nautical miles away. However, this system can only track 20,000 out of the 200,000 objects in orbit, not nearly enough to protect America’s commercial and government satellites.
The contract awarded to Raytheon is for the construction of a working Space Fence prototype to demonstrate the system’s feasibility. According to Raytheon, the new space fence will eventually include up to two S-band radars located on or below the equator “capable of detecting more and much smaller objects in low earth orbit to provide greater accuracy and timeliness to meet warfighter space situational awareness requirements.” When deployed in 2017, the system is expected to cost $3.5 billion and will be operated by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network.
Space debris (which includes everything from disabled satellites to a glove dropped by American astronaut Ed White) is a critical threat to the thousands of operating satellites in earth orbit. Due to the high velocities involved in space orbits (often 17,000 mph) even objects just a few inches long can destroy a billion-dollar satellite. In 2009, Iridium 33, a US communication satellite and part of the Iridium’s constellation of satellites used to provide global voice and data service, collided with out-of-service Kosmos 2251, destroying both satellites and creating over 2000 new pieces of space debris. Given the cost and time required to replace satellites, combined with their critical role in the world’s communication backbone, Raytheon’s new Space Fence cannot come soon enough.
