Two prototype satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and four missile-tracking satellites for the US Space Force rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Wednesday from Florida’s Space Coast.
These satellites are part of a new generation of spacecraft designed to track hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia and perhaps emerging missile threats from Iran or North Korea, which are developing their own hypersonic weapons.
Hypersonic missiles are smaller and more maneuverable than conventional ballistic missiles, which the US military’s legacy missile defense satellites can detect when they launch. Infrared sensors on the military’s older-generation missile tracking satellites are tuned to pick out bright thermal signatures from missile exhaust.
Hypersonic missiles represent a new challenge for the Space Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Unlike the predictable parabolic trajectory of ballistic missiles that takes them into space, hypersonic missiles are smaller, less visible and move more in Earth’s atmosphere. This makes them hard to keep track of due to their maneuverability.
A military organization, the Space Development Agency (SDA), which is almost five years old, has launched 27 prototype satellites in the past year to demonstrate the Pentagon’s concept for a fleet of hundreds of small, relatively inexpensive spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. The new fleet, called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture by the SDA, will consist of hundreds of spacecraft designed to track missiles and send data about their flight paths down to the ground. This tracking data will provide an early warning for those targeted by hypersonic missiles, as well as aid in generating a firing solution for interceptors to shoot them down.
This story was first published by Ars Technica, a well-respected source of technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars Technica is owned by WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast.
The SDA constellation employs conventional tactical radio links, laser inter-satellite communications, and broad-view infrared sensors. The agency, now a part of the Space Force, plans to launch successive generations of small satellites, each introducing new technology. The SDA’s strategy relies on commercially available spacecraft and sensor technology, and will be more resilient to an attack from an adversary than traditional military space assets. These legacy military satellites often cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars each, and their architectures rely on a small number of large satellites which could be easy targets for an enemy determined to inflict damage.
Four smaller SDA satellites and two sizeable spacecraft for the Missile Defense Agency were part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch, lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:30 pm EST (2230 UTC) Wednesday.
The rocket followed a northeast trajectory from Cape Canaveral to position the six payloads into low-Earth orbit. Officials from the Space Force affirmed the successful launch later that Wednesday evening.
The four tracking satellites from SDA, constructed by L3Harris, are the final spacecraft that the agency will launch in its prototype constellation, named Tranche 0. Later this year, the SDA intends to initiate a speedy launch campaign with SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance to swiftly expand its operational Tranche 1, conducting launches at one-month intervals to deploy around 150 satellites. Following this, a Tranche 2 constellation with enhanced sensor technologies is planned.
The primary payloads during Wednesday’s launch were meant for the Missile Defense Agency. These two Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites, one delivered by L3Harris and the other by Northrop Grumman, will exhibit medium field-of-view sensors. While these sensors may not cover as much area as the SDA satellites, they will provide more sensitive and detailed missile tracking data.
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“Our advanced satellites on orbit will bring the integrated and resilient missile warning and defense capabilities the US requires against adversaries developing more advanced maneuverable missiles,” said Christopher Kubasik, chairman and CEO of L3Harris. “L3Harris delivered this advanced missile tracking capability on behalf of MDA and SDA on orbit in just over three years after work was authorized to proceed. We are proud to be a critical part of the new space sensing architecture.”
The HBTSS satellites, valued at more than $300 million, and the SDA’s tracking prototypes will participate in joint military exercises in the coming months, where the wide-view SDA satellites will provide “cueing data” to the MDA’s HBTSS spacecraft. The narrower field of view of the HBTSS satellites can provide more specific, target-quality data to a ground-based interceptor, according to a report last year published by the Congressional Research Service. Future tranches, or generations, of SDA satellites will incorporate the medium field-of-view sensing capability flying on the MDA’s HBTSS satellites.
With SDA taking over the responsibility for making this technology operational, that will leave the MDA, which has historically flown its own missile-tracking satellites, focused on next-generation sensor development, an MDA spokesperson told Ars.
Military officials decided only last year to place the four SDA satellites on the same launch as the MDA’s HBTSS mission. With all six satellites flying in the same orbital plane, there will be opportunities to see the same targets with both types of spacecraft and sensors. These targets may include scheduled US military missile tests or foreign launches.
“The intent is to be able to work with cooperative and noncooperative targets to be able to do our demonstrations,” a senior SDA official said during a background briefing.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
