Page 7 - Geosynchronous Orbit News Today

The July reverse industry days on space domain awareness will allow Space Systems Command to get a closer look at the myriad industry efforts to see what the service might be able to simply acquire rather than have to develop itself.

"It's a big acknowledgement that [Low Earth Orbit] is expanding rapidly. It's of national importance. It's of commercial importance. And there's a need to have more eyes on the sky," CEO Dan Ceperley told Breaking Defense in an interview.

"What we're trying to do is just like you do with your financial portfolios, where you diversify your financial portfolio, so you don't go broke if one stock takes a tumble. We want to do the same thing with our satellite architecture," said CSO Gen. Jay Raymond.

Space Force has established the new 19th Space Defense Squadron to monitor what officials now refer to as "xGEO" space.

The Army, in particular, is looking for a "magic bullet" — one antenna that can receive SATCOM signals from constellations in LEO, MEO and GEO. But it may be disappointed due to the laws of physics, says Rick Lober, VP of defense and intelligence systems at Hughes.

DIU is seeking companies with the "capability for bulk storage of liquid (>5,000 kg) and gaseous propellants on orbit," including hydrazine, liquid oxygen and others.

The bottom line, according to DIA is that space "is being increasingly militarized" around the globe, and the threats to US military and commercial space activities continue to grow, from ground-based ASAT tests, to ISR fleets, to deep space hiding places.

"We know that the way of warfare has changed, and we're going to be having difficulties with jamming, and having difficulties getting our position navigation and timing signals to our warfighters," said AFRL Director Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle.

Space Force hopes to finally be able to ditch this year its "old clunker" SPADOC computer system for managing space surveillance data.

Space Force budget gets a big boost to $24.5B in FY23, focus on resilience The FY23 request is $7 billion more than the $17.4 billion the service asked for...