The United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said.
The previously classified Geosynchronous Space
Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) will supplement ground-based radars and
optical telescopes in tracking thousands of pieces of debris so orbital
collisions can be avoided, General William Shelton said at the Air Force
Association meeting in Orlando on Friday.
He called it a "neighborhood watch program"
that will provide a more detailed perspective on space activities. He said the
satellites, scheduled to be launched this year, also will be used to ferret out
potential threats from other spacecraft.
The program "will bolster our ability to discern
when adversaries attempt to avoid detection and to discover capabilities they
may have which might be harmful to our critical assets at these higher
altitudes," Shelton said in the speech, which also was posted on the Air
Force Association's website.
The two-satellite network, built by Orbital Sciences Corp
will drift around the orbital corridor housing much of the world's
communications satellites and other spacecraft.
The Air Force currently tracks about 23,000 pieces of
orbiting debris bigger than about 4 inches. These range from old rocket bodies
to the remains of an exploded Chinese satellite.
The Air Force released a fact sheet emphasizing the
program's debris-monitoring abilities. Brian Weeden, technical advisor with the
Washington-based Secure World Foundation, said the U.S. military already has a
satellite in a better position to do that job.
"I think the (Obama) Administration is being more
honest when it says that it declassified this program to try and deter attacks
on U.S. satellites," in geostationary, or GEO, orbits located about 23,000
miles above Earth, Weeden wrote in an email to Reuters.
"The U.S. has a lot of very specialized and
important national security satellites in the GEO region and it is very
concerned about protecting those satellites ... so by telling other countries
that it has some ability to closely monitor objects near GEO and their
behavior, the U.S. hopes that will deter other countries from attacking its
important satellites," Weeden said.
The new satellites also will give the U.S. military
greater insight into what other countries have in orbit.
"There's nothing wrong with that, but it is exactly
the sort of thing the U.S. is worried other countries will do to it,"
Weeden added.
Costs and technical details of the program were not
released.
The satellites are scheduled for launch aboard an
unmanned Delta 4 rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of
Lockheed Martin and Boeing, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida
during the last quarter of 2014.
Shelton said two replacement satellites are targeted for
launch in 2016.
*This version of the story corrects spelling of Weeden in
paragraphs 9 and 13
**Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by David Gregorio