United States Space Surveillance Network

United States Space Surveillance Network

The United States Space Surveillance Network is a critical part of United States Strategic Command's (USSTRATCOM) mission and involves detecting, tracking, cataloging and identifying artificial objects orbiting Earth, i.e. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentation debris. Space surveillance accomplishes the following:

  • Predict when and where a decaying space object will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere;
  • Prevent a returning space object, which to radar looks like a missile, from triggering a false alarm in missile-attack warning sensors of the U.S. and other countries;
  • Chart the present position of space objects and plot their anticipated orbital paths;
  • Detect new man-made objects in space;
  • Correctly map objects travelling in the earth's orbit;
  • Produce a running catalog of man-made space objects;
  • Determine which country owns a re-entering space object;
  • Inform NASA whether or not objects may interfere with satellites and International Space Station orbits.

The SPACETRACK program represents a worldwide Space Surveillance Network (SSN) of dedicated, collateral, and contributing electro-optical, passive radio frequency (rf) and radar sensors. The SSN is tasked to provide space object cataloging and identification, satellite attack warning, timely notification to U.S. forces of satellite fly-over, space treaty monitoring, and scientific and technical intelligence gathering. The continued increase in satellite and orbital debris populations, as well as the increasing diversity in launch trajectories, non-standard orbits, and geosynchronous altitudes, necessitates continued modernization of the SSN to meet existing and future requirements and ensure their cost-effective supportability.

SPACETRACK also developed the systems interfaces necessary for the command and control, targeting, and damage assessment of a potential future U.S. anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) system. There is an Image Information Processing Center and Supercomputing facility at the Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS). The resources and responsibility for the HAVE STARE Radar System development were transferred to SPACETRACK from an intelligence program per Congressional direction in FY93.

Read more about United States Space Surveillance Network:  1957–1963, Missile Warning and Space Surveillance in The Eisenhower Years, US Space Catalog, Shemya and Diyarbakir Radar Sites, Space Surveillance Network, Air Force Space Surveillance System, Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance, Space Based Visible (SBV) Sensor

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, space and/or network:

    “I incline to think that the people will not now sustain the policy of upholding a State Government against a rival government, by the use of the forces of the United States. If this leads to the overthrow of the de jure government in a State, the de facto government must be recognized.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    “And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
    —John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    “If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.”
    —Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    “Play is a major avenue for learning to manage anxiety. It gives the child a safe space where she can experiment at will, suspending the rules and constraints of physical and social reality. In play, the child becomes master rather than subject.... Play allows the child to transcend passivity and to become the active doer of what happens around her.”
    —Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)

    “Parents need all the help they can get. The strongest as well as the most fragile family requires a vital network of social supports.”
    —Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)