Air Force Surveillance Satellite Launch Delayed
The U.S. Air Force said it postponed Thursday’s scheduled launch of a space-based surveillance satellite because a software problem was found in a similar Minotaur IV rocket. A spokesman said the Air Force doesn’t know when the satellite, which will monitor space debris among other things, will be ready but is preparing to set a new launch date this month. The launch will be from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
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The satellite was developed by Boeing and Ball Aerospace to “provide timely detection, collection, identification and tracking of man-made space objects from deep space to low-earth orbits,” Boeing said in its mission pamphlet. The Defense Department’s current satellite monitoring system uses earthbound sensors that can’t monitor deep-space satellites effectively and that are often hampered by shifts in weather and atmosphere, the company said. The new satellite will plug its tracking data into the Air Force’s Space Surveillance Network. The lifespan of the craft is seven years, Boeing said.
Terrestrial space-monitoring groups such as the Space Data Association said they hope the Air Force will share the data from the mission. But the Air Force doesn’t have plans to directly link information from the new satellite to the association’s database, said a spokesman for the group. “We are working with elements of the U.S. government and hopefully soon the European Space Agency on how there can be more cooperation with the SDA,” said Toby Nassif, director of the association and vice president of satellite operations and engineering at Intelsat. If data from the new satellite are helpful and make space “a better place for operations, we hope to be able to take advantage of this technology through our ongoing discussions with the USG,” Nassif said. The association is a not-for-profit group formed by SES, Intelsat and Inmarsat to document the exact positions of satellite and space debris (CD Nov 30 p1). The group tracks the orbital locations of its member satellites and compares them to Defense’s surveillance database at www.space-track.org.
The Air Force plans to increase its space-based surveillance capabilities. It said in March that it will commission a second surveillance satellite this year.