8:45 pm EDT replace: The launch of an Atlas V rocket with the Silent Barker mission has been postponed from Tuesday resulting from Tropical Storm Idalia. “Out of an abundance of warning for personnel security, a important nationwide safety payload and the approaching Tropical Storm Idalia, the staff made the choice to return the rocket and payload to the vertical integration facility (VIF),” ULA mentioned. “We’ll work with our clients and the vary to verify our subsequent launch try and a brand new date can be offered as soon as it’s secure to launch.”
Unique publish: The Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace would not usually discuss any of its missions, however in an uncommon break with precedent, the button-down spy satellite tv for pc company is taking a special tack with its subsequent launch Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“We’re making an attempt to be extra clear and share extra data,” mentioned Chris Scolese, director of the Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace, in a roundtable with reporters Monday. As extra international locations and corporations launch missions into house, Scolese mentioned the house surroundings is changing into extra congested, contested, and aggressive.
“It’s additionally changing into simpler and simpler to see what’s going up there,” Scolese mentioned. “We need to let individuals know, to some extent, what our capabilities are.”
The NRO has a number of satellites—officers will not say precisely what number of—mounted on prime of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for liftoff at 8:34 am EDT (12:34 UTC) from Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station. Their vacation spot is geosynchronous orbit, a belt of satellites positioned greater than 22,000 miles (practically 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.
In geosynchronous orbit, a spacecraft completes one lap round Earth on the identical fee because the planet’s rotation, giving a satellite tv for pc a continuing view of the identical geographic area. That makes geosynchronous orbit a well-liked location for communications satellites, climate observatories, and platforms to detect the primary signal of a missile assault.
The US House Pressure and the NRO have quite a few satellites in geosynchronous orbit, and the mission poised for liftoff Tuesday will assist observe potential threats to these multibillion-dollar property.
“Geosynchronous orbit is way away,” Scolese mentioned. “Floor-based techniques have a more durable time seeing what’s up there. This offers us the potential of being on this identical orbit, in order that we’re nearer to what’s taking place up there. It is not going to be wanting on the floor, will probably be house.”
You’ll be able to watch Tuesday’s launch on ULA’s stay webcast, which now we have embedded on this web page.
Bark or chew?
This new mission additionally has a quick code identify—Silent Barker—and an eye catching mission patch, which is not uncommon for launches with NRO spy satellites.
The NRO and the House Pressure are companions on the Silent Barker mission. The NRO managed the event of the satellites and can function them as soon as they’re in orbit, whereas the House Pressure is offering the launch on ULA’s Atlas V rocket.
The Silent Barker satellites will detect and regularly observe different objects in geosynchronous orbit, a functionality that army leaders have prioritized during the last decade. In that point, Pentagon officers say there was an escalation in “cat and mouse” video games between US satellites and people operated by China and Russia.
US officers have highlighted a number of occurrences of Russian inspector satellites approaching US spy satellites flying in low-Earth orbit lately. Increased up in geosynchronous orbit, one other mysterious Russian army satellite tv for pc has roamed close to quite a few industrial communications satellites and a French-Italian army spacecraft, elevating considerations that it might be making an attempt to intercept radio indicators.
The US army already has its personal satellites able to approaching different objects in geosynchronous orbit. These satellites, a part of the House Pressure’s Geosynchronous House Situational Consciousness Program (GSSAP) program, had been a part of an orbital dance with two Chinese language army satellites final 12 months.
The US army dispatched one of many GSSAP satellites to get a more in-depth take a look at the 2 Chinese language spacecraft, however the Chinese language satellites took off in reverse instructions. Then one of many Chinese language spacecraft settled right into a place to get a sunlit view of the House Pressure surveillance satellite tv for pc that had been chasing it.
To this point, there have not been experiences that any of those cat-and-mouse video games have resulted in a bodily or cyberattack on a US army satellite tv for pc, however that is what the Silent Barker mission is designed to protect in opposition to.
“The concept of the mission is to place a satellite tv for pc into geosynchronous orbit after which to be that orbital regime and get a way of what’s taking place everyday,” Scolese mentioned. “Satellites do transfer in geosynchronous orbit. You’ve heard about communications satellites transferring from one location to a different to offer higher protection to different areas.”
Officers haven’t disclosed what corporations had been concerned in constructing the Silent Barker satellites or what sort of sensors the spacecraft will use. The finances for this system additionally stays a secret.
“Actually, we wish to have the ability to see that so we all know what’s happening within the space, however we additionally need to know if one thing is happening that’s surprising, or shouldn’t be happening, that might probably symbolize a menace to a high-value asset, both our’s or one in every of our allies,” Scolese mentioned.
He known as the Silent Barker mission a “watchdog” in geosynchronous orbit. That is related nomenclature to the “neighborhood watch” description the House Pressure has used for the GSSAP satellites. A key distinction between the Silent Barker and GSSAP packages, in accordance with army officers, is the power of the Silent Barker satellites to repeatedly monitor the place, or “preserve custody,” of different objects in geosynchronous orbit.
“What Silent Barker goes to do is present that indication and warning (of a attainable menace to a US satellite tv for pc), so it may well inform choices about what we do or don’t have to do when it comes to maneuvers or consciousness,” Scolese mentioned.
“The aptitude that we’re going launch tomorrow goes an extended method to giving us aggressive endurance and aggressive benefit in house to verify we not solely see, however preserve custody of the threats in GEO (geosynchronous orbit),” mentioned Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, who heads US House Techniques Command, which oversees the army’s procurement of satellites and rockets.
The army presently depends totally on ground-based radars to scan geosynchronous orbit. Silent Barker follows up on a devoted army surveillance satellite tv for pc that launched in 2010 with an optical sensor to search for at geosynchronous orbit from low-Earth orbit, only a few hundred miles above Earth.
Putting the Silent Barker sensors nearer to their observational targets will give the NRO and the House Pressure a brand new set of eyes in geosynchronous orbit. Floor radars include limitations as a result of they’ll solely see a part of the sky at a given time, and there are components just like the climate to contemplate. The radars can also solely detect an object concerning the measurement of a basketball or bigger. Silent Barker will see smaller objects and will not be topic to terrestrial limitations.
