When the U.S. Air Force declares
operational acceptance of the Space Fence radar located on Kwajalein Atoll, it
will play a critical role in providing a tactical advantage to our warfighters
in the space domain. Space Fence will utilize its flexibility, coverage,
and sensitivity to detect and accurately track significantly more objects than
the current-day catalog. This crucial capability is now one step closer to
providing unprecedented space situational awareness with the system completing
its developmental and operational testing phases and has entered a trial period
– one of the last steps before achieving operational acceptance.
Beyond cataloging objects, it will
detect closely-spaced objects, breakups, maneuvers, launches and conjunction
assessments from low Earth orbit through geosynchronous Earth orbit.
Frequent collisions and deterioration of assets, such as defunct satellites and
rocket boosters, have increased the amount of space debris and raised the risk
of future collisions in space. According to NASA’s most recent Orbital Debris
Quarterly News, NASA calculates about 17.6 million pounds of objects are in
earth orbit. That number will only grow as more commercial space projects
launch massive constellations with thousands of small satellites, presenting a
huge problem for both U.S. government and commercial organizations.
That’s where the U.S. Air Force’s Space
Fence will play a crucial role.
The radar system will also play a
crucial role in the everyday lives of Americans, as we become more dependent on
space-based technologies for everything from weather forecasting, banking,
global communications to GPS navigation. Today, these critical services are
being threatened by hundreds of thousands of objects and space debris orbiting
the Earth.
“Space Fence will revolutionize the way
we track and classify objects that threaten both manned and unmanned military
and commercial space assets critical to our national defense and economy,” said
Dr. Rob Smith, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Radar
and Sensor Systems. “The Air Force Space Surveillance Network currently tracks
about 25,000 objects. When Space Fence comes online, the catalog will
experience significant growth and when fully operational, Space Fence will be
the world’s largest and most advanced radar system, providing unprecedented
space situational awareness.”
Space Fence has already begun to prove its capabilities. During testing of the system in March, it detected the debris field from an anti-satellite test conducted by India. Space Fence observed a significant amount of debris tracks surrounding the time of the event, and the system proved its ability to automatically predict and correlate their next crossing times.
Space Fence uses advanced solid-state S-band radar technology. The technology includes element level digital beamforming, Gallium Nitride-based, software defined programmability that can be adapted over time to address emerging needs of the warfighter.
Source: U.S. Air Force
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