National Space Symposium Show News - April 7-10, 2008 - (Page 10)

COMMERCIAL SPACE Satellite Protection Moves into Line for Increased Funding The idea of being able to protect friendly satellites, and simultaneously interfere with hostile satellites if necessary, is gaining new emphasis at the Pentagon in the wake of demonstrations by China and the U.S. of abilities to destroy satellites. Space Situational Awareness, or SSA, is one aspect of U.S. efforts to protect its satelRobert Kehler. lites, but annual funding has been relatively low—less than 4% of the Pentagon space budget. Recently, however, there has been a boost in investment, according to Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command. He doesn’t elaborate, but is glad to see the up-trend. Air Force Space Command, whose mission includes defending military, intelligence, civil and commercial satellites, has its own plan, according to Commander Gen. C. Robert Kehler. But, he tells Congress, it won’t be easy. The challenge in SSA, for example, is to find an affordable way to protect space capabilities that balances awareness, hardening, countermeasures and reconstitution—and alternate ways of doing the job. Because it’s not clear how efforts like this will be accomplished, AFSPC is establishing the Space Protection Program. It will help “make informed decisions about how best to preserve space capabilities focus our efforts and provide strategic recommendations” on the best ways to protect space systems, Kehler says. AFSPC, he adds, is “already strengthening and unifying relationships across the defense and intelligence community” to help achieve the goals. Boeing Birds Log 2,500 Years… More than 260 Boeing commercial and civil satellites have achieved a total of 2,500 years of service, the company says. Space activities date from 1963, when Boeing notched an industry first with Syncom, the world’s first communications satellite to operate in geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the equator. An exact model of the 78-pound, two-channel Syncom is shown here with Wideband Global SATCOM, a 12,716-pound, 1,900-channel craft, one of six ordered by the U.S. Air Force. “We maintain a solid satellite backlog in our factory, with 27 today, and we plan to launch at least five satellites in 2008,” said Craig Cooning, vp and general manager for Space and Intelligence Systems. Boeing is at Booth 200. …as Latest DirectTV Satellite Launched Boeing received the first on-orbit signals from its DirectTV 11 satellite, indicating that the craft is healthy and operating normally. A ground station in Hartebeesthoek, South Africa, reported spacecraft acquisition following the March 19 launch on a Sea Launch Zenit-3SL rocket from Sea Launch’s equatorial site in the Pacific Ocean. Arianespace Battles Bottlenecks Steps are being taken at Arianespace (Booth 406) to prevent a bottleneck in launch capacity as demand threatens to outstrip supply, according to Arianespace Chairman/CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall. It plans to accelerate the ramp-up of its new Soyuz launch pad in Kourou to meet increasing demand for that launcher; the new pad, due to open in mid-2009, is currently slated to start business with three missions the first year and four the second, but Arianespace is studying an extra launch in each year. This will entail expansion of its on-site payload preparation facilities which will be even busier as Arianespace ramps up its Ariane V launches and introduces the new Vega light launcher next year. ITT Scores Imaging Systems Success ITT (Booth 300) reports some recent successes in commercial and military imaging systems. Its high resolution commercial imaging systems on board DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-1 satellite are producing the most advanced imagery ever seen, the company says. ITT has now shipped the imaging system for WorldView-2, the imaging payload for GeoEye-1, and is currently developing imaging components for GeoEye-2. Detail from a WorldView-1 image of Houston from October 2007 is shown here. DigitalGlobe is at Booth 215. ..as Ball Builds WorldView-2 Colorado’s Ball Aerospace (Booth 403) reports successful completion of all bus structural testing, and receipt of ITT hardware for DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 satellite, which is to launch this year. Ball’s WorldView-2 team will be integrating the instrument suite in various stages over the next several months, followed by system performance and environmental testing, said program manager Jeff Dierks. The WorldView-2 spacecraft bus is the eighth contracted program in the company’s BCP (Ball commercial platform) satellite series. April, 2008 10 www.aviationweek.com/shownews http://www.aviationweek.com/shownews

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of National Space Symposium Show News - April 7-10, 2008

Arthur Clarke, 1917-2008 Critical Questions Loom Beyond the Rocket Motor New GPS for the USAF Generals Have Their Say 2,500 Years in Space Virgin Senses Sea-Change Technology Spin-Offs

National Space Symposium Show News - April 7-10, 2008

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