hree commercial firms have demonstrated a collective capability to help the Space Force more quickly detect and track satellites launched simultaneously into low Earth orbit (LEO) — a growing launch practice that is challenging the service’s abilities to spot potential on-orbit crashes.
AST SpaceMobile, Kayhan Space and LeoLabs provided space situational awareness data for the five satellites launched by SpaceX Sept. 12, 2024, for AST’s Bluebird Block 1 mission to the 18th Space Defense Squadron (SDS), CEO of Kayhan Siamak Hesar told the 11th Annual Space Traffic Management Conference here sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin.
AST is a satellite company collaborating with cellular telecommunications firms to create an on-orbit constellation to provide internet services. LeoLabs uses radars around the globe to detect and track satellites. Kayhan has created highly precise software designed to help satellite operators keep tabs on where their birds are in juxtaposition to those of other operators, as well as dangerous space junk.
The goal of the collaborative effort was to show that commercial data can help close the time lag between when a satellite is released into orbit from a rocket to when the Space Force can reliably track it and put the trajectory coordinates into the military’s catalog of space objects, he explained.
