Lockheed Martin [LMT] will continue tracking space debris as part of an Air Force situational awareness contract aimed at protecting satellites and other assets in orbit such as the International Space Station (ISS).
Lockheed Martin will proceed in the development of the a special data processor known as the Non-Traditional Data Pre-Processor (NDPP) under a $3.9 million Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) contract, the company said on Jan. 9.
ISC2 provides air and missile warning information to North American national leadership as well as space situational awareness data to U.S. Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command. ISCS tracks and catalogs more than 23,000 space objects, Lockheed Martin said.
Governments around the world have been working to improve space situational awareness since the Iridium-33 communications satellite and Russia’s Kosmos-2251 military satellite collided in 2009, creating large amounts of space debris.
“Space has no national borders so it’s important to share collected data to protect all the space assets currently orbiting the planet,” said Rob Smith, vice president of C4ISR systems at Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems and Global Solutions unit.
The NDPP system expands the ISC2 space data server to extend communications infrastructure and allow operators to share data between sensor and satellite sources around the world with the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) at Vandenberg AFB, Calif. It serves as a conduit for sensor and satellite operators globally to share data to improve the accuracy of the space object tracking.