By Ann Roosevelt
The Army’s first service-built and operated satellite in 50 years exceeded expectations during its short orbital life that is expected to end by burning up while reentering the atmosphere this week, the program manager said.
“This satellite has wildly exceeded my expectations,” said John London, nanosatellite technical manager for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command Technical Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The Space and Missile Defense Command-Operational Nanosatellite Effect, or SMDC-ONE, launched Dec. 8 as one of eight free-flying secondary payloads on a Falcon 9 two-stage booster, a Space Exploration Technologies Inc., or SpaceX, launch vehicle. The primary payload for this flight is the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The Falcon 9 launch was the first under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) supporting the NASA effort to develop commercial resupply services to the International Space Station.
SMDC-ONE is about the size of a loaf of bread, weighs about 10 pounds, and has antennas sticking out from the corners, said Dave Weeks, chief engineer on all nanosat technology efforts.
“I thought it would work….but really did not think it would be able to do this much,” he said in an interview.
The nanosat communicated multiple times a day not only to Huntsville, but also to a ground station in Colorado Springs, Colo., where ground crews supported the system round- the-clock.
“The results were beyond anything we could have hoped for,” London said. Researchers were able to communicate with the nanosat on its first pass over Huntsville, right after launch.
The main question researchers wanted to answer was, “could we demonstrate ability that we felt was militarily relevant and do that with a satellite of this size at this cost– these satellites are in the $300,000 price point range,” London said.
That could be considered a drop in the bucket compared to most military communication satellites that are generally much larger, more capable and operate at very high altitude orbits.
“These satellites we’re building are focused on building a niche capability for a specific need,” London said. “We think the fact that they’re so small and so low cost on a per unit basis that we can afford to put a lot of them up there to create a persistent effect…Where there’s always a satellite available to a given user in a given geographic area on the ground.”
The primary goal for SMDC-ONE was over-the-horizon communications of unattended ground sensor (UGS) data. The data was from sensors identical to what the Army has in the field today.
Weeks said the satellite could operate in two modes–first is the command and control node, where the satellite is tasked and state-of-health data is extracted. This is done on every satellite pass and the subsystems have been performing well, “much better than I expected.”
The second operational mode is the UGS simulator mode. “That’s where we send up files. The files can represent data from unattended ground sensors, they can represent text files, they can be Jpeg images, as well. We’ve done all of those,” Weeks said.
While the orbital path didn’t always include both ground stations, if the path did cross both Colorado Springs and Huntsville, files, text, images, could be exchanged between the two ground stations which are 1,200 miles apart.
SMDC commander Lt. Gen. Richard Formica sent a message from Huntsville to Colorado Springs via SMDC-ONE.
Weeks said the command used real passive infrared sensor data. “It’s real hardware.” A station was set up in Huntsville, outside the SMDC building that would collect that kind of data from passing people or vehicles. Sensors would transmit data to a gateway developed by the command and another government agency and then sent to the satellite. The operators could call for that data in Colorado Springs or in Huntsville.
“It all worked extremely well,” Weeks said.
With the satellite’s success, it is now up to senior Army leaders to decide what comes next.
London said the command is reaching out to different elements of the Army to expose them to the satellite technology to ensure they know it’s there and potentially available.
“Our idea is we want them to be small enough [the satellites] to where we can put a lot of them up and do that affordably,” London said.
Instead of trying to do lots of things with one satellite, the command wants to do just one thing…design that satellite for just one thing and do it very well, perhaps for one customer with a specific need. The satellites need not offer 100 percent persistent coverage, he said. It would depend on what the customer wants. Thus, the low cost means the nanosats would be customized for very specific niche requirements.
“The timeline that we typically advertise for these satellites is about two years,” London said. “If we have a two-year orbital life and we have to replace the satellites every two years, then we can stay inside the technology turning radius better than if he have to stretch a satellite life.”
This approach isn’t for everyone, he said. “What we want to do is fill gaps, where there are niche gaps for capabilities needed on the ground, especially for ground component warfighter–really want to focus especially on the dismounted ground component warfighter,” London said.
The command has a number of nanosats that are built and ready to fly, but London said they’ll probably be modified to take advantage of some things the technical center has learned.
For example, “we’d like to be able to be compatible with the PRC-class of hand held and mobile communication devices,” he said, particularly the A/N 117 and 152.
Also, the Operational Responsive Space office is funding an effort for SMDC to modify one of the nanosatellites and replace the communication element in it now with a software- defined radio.
“That, we think is going to be a tremendous improvement in what we can do, it really increases dramatically our capability,” London said.
That opens a number of mission areas such as Blue Force tracking, ways to communicate not only text messages but other data, which could be a life saver for soldiers in remote locations.