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.