C4ISRNET:

The Missile Defense Agency will deorbit two experimental missile warning satellites in the next couple years, the director announced this week.

Initially launched in 2009 with an expected lifespan of just two years, the two satellites that make up the Space Tracking and Surveillance System have served as risk reduction experiments for MDA’s missile warning enterprise for more than a decade now. The Northrop Grumman-built satellites were designed to track ballistic missiles from birth-to-death with its Raytheon-built infrared sensors from 1,350 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Sensing data could then be downlinked to the Ballistic Missile Defense System for missile interception.

The workhorse of the U.S. military’s missile warning satellites is the Space Force’s Space-Based Infrared System, detecting and tracking ballistic missiles all over the globe, 24/7. The experimental STSS, meanwhile, has advanced the concept of space-based missile warning by demonstrating that it’s possible to intercept a ballistic missile using orbital sensor data. In 2013, STSS fed tracking data to a U.S. Navy cruiser, which then launched an interceptor that successfully destroyed a ballistic missile.

MDA requested $34.1 million to maintain the program in its fiscal 2021 budget request, noting that the satellites continued to provide risk reduction for future missile-tracking and surveillance satellite systems and support integrated BMDS testing…



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