The space surveillance network needs a commercial boost — now

Last Friday, the U.S. Space Force added actions to a list of tenets which promote safe and responsible behavior in space. One tenet urges actors to mitigate the risks imposed by space debris. As low-Earth orbit becomes increasingly congested, space debris poses a significant risk to all space-actors. With over 250,000 pieces of trackable debris in low-Earth orbit today — and growing exponentially — space domain awareness is a critical focus area for national security leaders. At its foundation is the U.S. space surveillance network, which identifies, catalogs, and notifies U.S. forces of space objects, satellite fly-over, and other technical intelligence. The catch is that it was built in the 1950s as a missile warning architecture, not for continuous tracking of space objects. With the current space renaissance, coupled with increasing aggression from strategic competitors in the space domain, it’s time to reboot our legacy space surveillance network and enhance it with cost effective, sophisticated commercial capabilities that are available today.

The proliferation of low-Earth orbit

Low-earth orbit is becoming ever more crowded. Satellite constellations are rapidly growing to support the increased demand for scientific research, telecommunications, remote sensing and military applications. One report estimates there will be more than 60,000 satellites in orbit by 2030. More than 1,000 spacecraft were put into orbit in the first six months of 2021 alone, which is more than were launched in the first 52 years of space exploration combined.

Internationally, our competitors’ appetite for activity in low-Earth orbit is also insatiable, which threatens U.S. space superiority. China is reportedly planning to launch nearly 13,000 satellites to defeat SpaceX’s Starlink, a low-Earth orbit satellite internet constellation — and China already has plans to add modules to the Tiangong space station. Russia, too, has heightened security tensions in low-Earth orbit by testing an anti-satellite weapon (ASAT), which escalated global tensions, generated over 1,500 pieces of debris, and further increased the risk of orbital debris collisions. Other strategic competitors have also had their fair share of ASATs. 

To keep pace with growth, maintain our space superiority and increase our space domain awareness, the U.S. should increase the ability to have persistent comprehensive coverage of low-Earth orbit from various unexpected geographically dispersed locations, while also leveraging advances in artificial intelligence/machine learning and advanced cloud-based analytics.

Yesterday’s space surveillance network needs a boost, today

To keep pace with the increasing traffic in low-Earth orbit, the space surveillance network needs a boost. What started in the late 1950s in response to the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Cold War, has evolved into a combination of sensors that detect, track, catalog and identify artificial objects orbiting Earth.

While the rise of space objects has increased exponentially, the government owned and operated technology, infrastructure and system used to track space objects has not kept pace. The space surveillance network cannot track every satellite or piece of debris continuously. Our government-owned sensors and networks are not adequate to provide persistent, global coverage.

One place to start is to reduce the time elapsed between observations (the revisit rate) to meaningfully track and monitor objects in real-time so the data is relevant. With objects in low-Earth orbit moving at relative speeds of 17,000 mph the need for speed is tangible. We need to fill gaps in coverage, especially in the southern hemisphere, caused by geopolitical realities of the Cold War, which prioritized radar infrastructure in the northern hemisphere. We need all weather persistent capabilities to overcome individual sensor limitations. Lastly, we need the ability to store that data securely in a cloud-based environment where we can run different analytics on it and share it with people who matter most, even faster than the satellite is moving itself, and quite possibly at the speed of light, which happens to be 670 million mph.

Commercial solutions are available now to augment the space surveillance network. Cloud-based data analytics, all-weather and distributed ground radars and sensors to maximize global coverage support a resilient and scalable model for reducing operational risk. Commercial services can also augment the government’s space domain awareness efforts with more comprehensive information that can be rapidly shared, unclassified or classified. Purchasing data from commercial radars is more budget-friendly than building and maintaining costly phased array radars. More coverage means more clarity. 

Congress can help

The space surveillance network is essential to maintaining U.S. space superiority and space domain awareness, and it must be enhanced to keep pace with the evolving environment in space. But we cannot and should not wait for the Department of Defense to fix this on their own. Congress can direct and fund the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force to build a strategy and develop capability requirements for acquiring existing commercial space domain awareness data, products and services, ultimately refreshing and boosting our space surveillance network to be prepared for the 21st century space economy.

Sarah Mineiro the CEO of Tanagra Enterprises, a defense, intelligence, space, science and technology consulting firm. She was the staff lead of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee for the House Republicans and is now a Senior Associate with CSIS Aerospace Security Project. She was previously at Anduril where she was responsible for space and missile defense strategy.