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home > February 2008 issue > article
Congress wants closer eye on threats in orbit
By Jeff Angus
Special to Defense Systems
Almost a year after China used anti-satellite technology to
explode the Fengyun 1C, its own weather satellite, Congress chose
to up the ante on satellite protection. Lawmakers used the 2008
Defense Appropriations bill to boost the Defense Department and
Air Force’s request for space situational awareness (SSA) from
$200 million to about $300 million.
SSA is a system for collecting data on objects in orbital space,
including their location and projected trajectories. It consists of
radar installations; ground- and space-based visual, infrared and
other sensors; and 3-D and 4-D software for analyzing data. Objects
can be possible weapons, commercial satellites or debris, which is
any fragmented object greater than 10 centimeters in diameter.
Furthermore, if the United States’ satellites behave in an unexpected
manner, SSA components could recognize the anomaly and provide
data that analysts could use to determine if the satellite’s behavior
was caused by a malfunction, enemy action or a collision.
By cataloguing and projecting the movement of objects, SSA
technologies help operators avoid collisions with other satellites and
fragments, such as those from the Fengyun 1C. There is no way to
remove such debris. In geosynchronous orbit, “debris is forever,” said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense
Information, a security policy research group.
Although the amount of money appropriated in the fiscal 2008
bill had not been made public by press time, a conference committee
had proposed increased spending for certain initiatives,
including: - Self-aware capabilities for satellite components, designed to allow
equipment to diagnose and correct malfunctions.
- Space Fence, an existing radar system of three transmission stations
and six receiving stations in the United States.
- High Accuracy Network Determination System, designed to
reduce errors in the catalog of space objects tracked.
- Space-Based Space Surveillance, a set of sensors stationed in orbit
that can maintain a broader field of detection with less natural
interference.
- Rapid Attack Identification, Detection and Reporting System
Block 20, the second generation of an effort DOD said will offer
“attack detection, threat identification and characterization and
support rapid mission impact assessments on U.S. space systems.”
With ever more satellites in orbit, a single collision could set up a
cascading probability of further collisions, a theory Geoffrey Forden,
a physicist and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Science, Technology and Global Security Working
Group, documented in a recent paper.
“We know what the technologies and equipment for space situational
awareness are and how to deploy them,” Hitchens said. “We
just need to make the investment.”
That investment is designed to increase the accuracy of systems
by upgrading them primarily to track smaller objects — the current
threshold is about 5 centimeters — at higher altitudes and greater
distances.
One way to achieve better, less expensive and more rapid awareness
would be integrating U.S. systems with those that cover other
parts of the globe, such as Russian and Chinese SSA assets.
But in 2003, control of the catalog of orbital space objects passed
from NASA, which was driven at least partially by a culture of open
information-sharing, to U.S. Strategic Command, which tightened
control over SSA data, Hitchens said.
China’s weather-satellite takedown seems to have served as a
warning to commercial and military space users of the need to
upgrade and refine SSA. The existing system has identified and
started tracking 2,317 pieces of debris from the satellite formerly
known as Fengyun 1C, according to DOD’s published figures.
That’s 2,317 chances to inadvertently take out commercial or military
communications.
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