Space Control
Future Outlook
- Emerging technical areas include advanced radar development, radar surveillance, space object identification, electro-optical deep-space surveillance, collaborative sensing, and identification fusion and processing.
- Lincoln Laboratory is pursuing several initiatives in the Space Control area that include the next generation of sensor systems and downstream processing / information-extraction systems, such as
- A small-aperture, space-based, space surveillance system to provide wide-area search of the geosynchronous belt every 90 minutes for submeter-size objects
- A passive, ground-based, wide-angle "fence" search system for detecting low Earth-orbiting satellites, utilizing unique curved charge-coupled-device focal planes to achieve the wide coverage
- Net-centric machine-aided decision support algorithms to allow the operators in the Joint Space Operations Center to react to emerging threats to space assets
- Incorporation of space environment monitoring as part of integrated space situational awareness
- Initiation of efforts in climate-change modeling via novel sensor design in the far long-wave infrared
The Laboratory successfully deployed exploitation systems for wide-area persistent surveillance and an 880 megapixel video camera for surveillance applications. Above is the Multi-Aperture Sparse Imager Video System (MASIVS) focal plane with a single MASIVS camera.
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