Employment
Aerospace – Division 9
The Aerospace Division develops sensors, technologies, and systems that help to strengthen national security. Focus areas are space control, persistent surveillance, and environmental monitoring. The division's work includes development of system concepts, hardware and software system demonstrations, and technology transfer to industry. The primary technology focuses are the application of new components and algorithms to enable sensors with greatly enhanced capabilities and the development of exploitation systems to extract actionable information from sensors and networks on operational timelines.
| Groups |
Group 91—Space Control Systems
The Space Control Systems Group develops technology and techniques for space control and space surveillance missions. The group has its roots in the development of technology to detect, track, and characterize satellites, including the Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep-Space Surveillance (GEODSS) system and the Millstone Hill Radar. The group is currently developing a technology prototype for a unique large ground-based Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) to provide a wide-area search capability for small microsatellites in deep space. The group also supports the development and demonstration of a space-based optical system for space surveillance and provides technical support to the Government for the procurement of an operational constellation to perform this task in the future. The group also operates an extensive observational program utilizing space surveillance technology to search for and discover near-Earth asteroids at its electro-optical field site near Socorro, New Mexico. This program, Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR), has discovered more than 50% of the known asteroids in our solar system. The group's core talents are also applied to other mission areas, including the development and demonstration of data fusion and discrimination algorithms for missile defense. Finally, the group's activities include substantial efforts in the modeling and evaluation of technology for new space systems, sensor data collection by radar, and visible and infrared optical systems.
Group 92—Aerospace Sensor Technology
The Aerospace Sensor Technology Group develops RF sensors for aerospace applications. Current emphasis is on advanced wideband radar systems for space-object imaging and exploitation of radar and optical data. A major ongoing effort in the group is the development of a wideband radar system for timely on-demand imaging of small satellites in orbits ranging from low-Earth to geosynchronous (40,000 km range). The new radar will operate in the 92–100 GHz band and will achieve an order of magnitude improvement in inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) image quality. The group is also involved in development of several other advanced radar systems, including the Space Fence, a large phased array radar system for space surveillance Other areas of research include development of techniques for fusion and exploitation of optical and ISAR data, multistatic radar, and interferometric ISAR. The group is also responsible for technology development and upgrades to the Lincoln Space Surveillance Complex, an operational test bed for radar technology and space situational awareness comprising the Haystack, Haystack Auxiliary, and Millstone radars in Westford, Massachusetts.
Group 93—Space Situational Awareness
There are currently more than 19,000 objects in Earth's orbit, ranging in importance from operational satellites to orbital debris. In order to monitor this large population, the Space Situational Awareness Group develops algorithms, techniques, and operational concepts to track and characterize these objects. The group operates the Lincoln Space Surveillance Complex (LSSC), comprising the Millstone deep-space satellite tracking radar and the Haystack and Haystack Auxiliary wideband imaging radars. All of these radars are remotely controlled from the Lexington Space Situational Awareness Center (LSSAC), which serves as a data processing and fusion node for the LSSC and other ground- and space-based space surveillance sensors. Together, the LSSC and LSSAC serve as an operational test bed for space situational awareness technologies and provide access to a rich set of radar and optical data. The group's current research and development efforts focus on problems such as tracking and identification of newly launched satellites, tracking and discrimination of satellites in geosynchronous clusters, automated radar image exploitation, close approach monitoring and collision warning, applications of multisensor data fusion, and decision support. The group is also developing a net-centric, service-oriented architecture that networks all of these capabilities together in an integrated information system.
Group 95—Space Systems Analysis
The Space Systems Analysis Group identifies and evaluates threats to the U.S. use of space for military, intelligence, civil, and commercial purposes. This work involves understanding the attributes and vulnerabilities of U.S. space-related systems, including the sensors and networks used to detect, track, and characterize objects in space, the satellites that provide space-based services, and the infrastructure used to control and operate these satellites. A central component of this effort involves consideration of how adversaries might try to exploit vulnerabilities and technical evaluation of the knowledge and resources required to mount a credible threat against U.S. systems. The group also develops concepts for reducing U.S. vulnerabilities to these identified threats. This work requires detailed modeling of optical, radar, and propulsion systems; novel ideas for new space systems and on-orbit operations; and consideration of the timelines, architectures, and decision-making processes for maintaining awareness of the space environment. In addition, the group pursues potentially game-changing, innovative ideas for remote sensing of space and the Earth. This part of the group's work involves sensor design, signal and image processing, and target and environmental phenomenology. The group seeks researchers from the physical sciences, including physics, mathematics, and chemistry, as well as from a wide range of engineering disciplines (including electrical, computer, mechanical, chemical, aeronautical, and astronautical).
Group 97—Sensor Technology and System Applications
The Sensor Technology and System Applications Group develops environmental monitoring electro-optical (EO) infrared (IR) sensor systems for detecting and tracking natural and man-made phenomena. The group's activities include the extraction of target and feature information from airborne and space-borne hyperspectral imagery; system support of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) environmental satellites in performance analysis and improvement of existing sensors and products; architecture definition and sensor development support for the next-generation NOAA satellite systems; and chemical- and biological-agent detection sensor and system development. Work includes EO IR sensor design, system and architecture analysis, signal processing, data analysis, and algorithm development.
Group 99—Advanced Space Systems and Concepts
The Advanced Space Systems and Concepts Group's expertise is in the area of electro-optical imaging systems, image processing, video exploitation, and low-power optical communications systems. The group leverages this core expertise to architect, prototype, and build imaging hardware and software systems in support of aerospace surveillance, wide-area persistent surveillance, and focused surveillance programs for Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and NASA sponsors.
top of page