Delta 4 successfully soars to the high ground to deploy two patrol satellites

[F-22Raptor]

CAPE CANAVERAL — The 375th Delta rocket doubled the size of the Air Force’s “neighborhood watch” program today with the successful launch and deployment of two surveillance satellites into the vast geosynchronous belt of spacecraft around the planet.

Evolved from its humble beginnings 56 years ago to today’s modern Delta 4 rockets, the 206-foot-tall vehicle produced 1.1 million pounds of thrust to launch at 12:52 a.m. EDT (0452 GMT) from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 37.

The mission: Carry twin Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites 22,000 miles above the Earth in a complex ascent that required three firings by the upper stage and lasted more than six hours.

After an evening countdown that saw 165,000 gallons of cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen loaded into the Delta 4’s two stages, the United Launch Alliance rocket began igniting its Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-68A main engine at T-minus 5 seconds and then lit a pair of Orbital ATK strap-on solid boosters at T-0 to begin the journey to the high ground.

Within five minutes, the rocket had left the atmosphere, shed the solids, first stage and nose cone as the upper stage began powering the vehicle toward a preliminary orbit.

That is when the mission went into a news blackout. No further information about the stair-step maneuvers by the Delta 4 was released in real-time.

But the vehicle evidently performed properly, reaching the low-altitude parking orbit, then moved to a highly elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit before coasting for several hours and executing a final burn to circularize the orbit for satellite deployment.

A press release seven hours after launch announced a successful outcome had been achieved, delivering the GSSAP No. 3 and GSSAP No. 4 satellites into the proper near-geosynchronous orbit.

“Thank you to the ULA, Air Force and industry partners for the outstanding teamwork and flawless execution that made today’s mission a success,” said Laura Maginnis, ULA vice president of Custom Services.

Delta 375 marked the 106th successful launch in a row for the Delta program since 1999 and 359th success overall since 1960.

United Launch Alliance also extended its mission record to 110, completing its 44th mission for the Air Force.

The once-classified GSSAP project came out of the shadows in early 2014, just months before its first-of-two launches, to put the world on notice that the U.S. military would soon have the capability to patrol geosynchronous orbit.

“The first two GSSAP satellites have performed remarkably well,” said Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, Space and Missile Systems Center commander and Air Force program executive officer for space. “These next two satellites will add to that capability and enable us to understand more completely things what occurs in the geosynchronous orbit to a very high quality. It’s a key piece in the puzzle for space situational awareness.”

GSSAP’s first satellite pair launched aboard a single Delta 4 rocket in July 2014 and is used today by U.S. Strategic Command to provide the military maneuverable eyes in this critical region of space.

“From that unique vantage point they will survey objects in the GEO belt and allow us both to track known objects and debris and to monitor potential threats that may be aimed at this critically important region,” Douglas Loverro, deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, told Congress in 2014.

“In short, threats can no longer hide in deep space.”

Although many of the technical specifications of the GSSAP satellites remain classified, the Air Force says the spacecraft have optical payloads to image the location, orbit, size and status of space objects. That data, officials say, improves the military’s ability to rapidly detect and warn of impending collisions and to characterize and attribute any “disturbances” to assets in geosynchronous orbit.

“Our decision to declassify this program was simple. We need to monitor what happens 22,000 miles above the Earth, and we want to make sure that everyone knows we can do so,” Loverro said.

“We believe that such efforts add immeasurably to both the safety of spaceflight and the stability that derives from the ability to attribute actions — to the benefit of all space-faring nations and all who rely on space-based services.”

Geosynchronous orbit is precious real estate in space because that is where satellites have the same orbital period as the Earth’s rotation — 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds — and fly in lockstep with a specific area of the globe.

Television satellites and weather observatories use geosynchronous orbit, as well as vital military communications, missile-warning and reconnaissance spacecraft that the U.S. government relies upon both in peacetime and wartime.

“Space capabilities touch every facet of our lives — they allow people and governments around the world to see with clarity, navigate with accuracy, communicate with certainty and operate with assurance,” the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center told Spaceflight Now in the lead up to this launch.

“This (GSSAP) capability assists the U.S. and its allies to achieve responsible and safe use of space. By gaining more comprehensive space situational awareness, we are better able to provide more robust spaceflight safety information.”

Orbital ATK built the identical pairs of GSSAP satellites, which have the ability to fly in close formation with other objects in orbit.

“An example of GSSAP’s benefits was cited in a recent speech by the Secretary of the Air Force Deborah James who said that the Geosynchronous Space Situation Awareness Program assisted the Navy in their investigation of the on-orbit issue on Multiple User Objective System (MUOS)-3,” SMC told Spaceflight Now.

“GSSAP (used) its unique vantage point, capabilities and maneuverability in a rendezvous and proximity operation (which) allowed GSSAP to collect unique characterization data, ultimately allowing the Navy to fix the problem,” said James.

And just yesterday the Air Force confirmed that GSSAP provided inspection imagery of the MUOS 5 satellite, which suffered the failure of its primary orbit-raising system in late June. That has left the satellite more than 10,000 miles away from a useable orbit.

They Navy has not said what was wrong with MUOS 3, and no GSSAP imagery from either encounter has been publicly revealed.

The Air Force has declined to say if any further satellites are being built for future GSSAP launches, and said the financial details of this program are classified.

This was the third of four Delta launches planned in 2016, following two successful National Reconnaissance Office satellite deployments. The year’s final mission is Delta 376 scheduled for November to launch the Air Force’s Wideband Global SATCOM communications satellite No. 8.

For United Launch Alliance, the firm’s next launch is the Atlas 5 rocket on Sept. 8 to send NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample return probe on its voyage to Asteroid Bennu.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/...-high-ground-to-deploy-two-patrol-satellites/

 

[F-22Raptor]

Delta IV Set for GEO 'We See All' Mission

The U.S. Air Force is poised to double its geosynchronous orbit space situational awareness and satellite-to-satellite imaging with the planned Aug. 19 predawn launch of two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites on board a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Medium 4,2 vehicle with two solid rocket boosters.

The mission seal on the Delta IV fairing includes three owls, two of them holding a streamer in Latin that reads “Videmus Omnia,” which translates to “We See All”—a warning to Russians and Chinese that any attempt to physically attack U.S. satellites will be detected by the U.S. GSSAP (pronounced “GeeSap”) spacecraft.

Liftoff of the 206-foot-tall, 1.1 million lb-thrust Delta IV is set for 12:47 a.m. EDT at the opening of a 65-minute launch window that closes at 1:52 a.m. EDT. The mission will fly from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-37B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The satellites will not be released from the Delta’s second stage until about six hours after launch. The mission is designated Air Force Space Command (AFSPC-6).

The oxygen/hydrogen Rocketdyne Aerojet RS-68A engine for the first stage will generate 702,000 lbs of liftoff thrust, while each Orbital ATK GEM 60 solid rocket booster will add another 197,500 lbs thrust for the first 93 seconds of flight.

The first stage will continue to fire until its cutoff at 3 minutes, 58 seconds into the flight, followed by first stage separation 8 seconds later.

Ignition of the second stage at 4 minutes, 20 seconds will be followed by payload fairing separation at 4 minutes, 30 seconds.

Launch commentary will then cease to avoid providing clues on the trajectory to Russian and Chinese intelligence services.

The twin Orbital ATK-built Air Force Space Command satellites will join two others launched on July 28, 2014.

Mounted side by side under the two halves of the 13-foot-wide, nearly 40-foot-long launch shroud, the AFSPC-6 satellites will be boosted directly into geosynchronous orbit. They will remain attached to the Delta IV’s 25,000 lb-thrust Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10B-2 cryogenic upper stage until they reach about 22,300 miles altitude.

The two Orbital ATK GSSAP-3 and 4 spacecraft will join GSSAP-1 and GSSAP-2 to drift above and below the geosynchronous arc at about 22,300 miles altitude, where they can image and eavesdrop on primarily Chinese and Russian spacecraft. The new USAF satellites are capable of proximity operations where, with great care, they will be maneuvered around individual Russian and Chinese satellites.

There are currently about 600 satellites in geosynchronous orbit, including operational and backup as well as expired spacecraft. GSSAP controllers at the 50th Space Wing, Schriever AFB, Colo., and the Intelligence Community as a whole, want to look at them all to understand if there are any collision threats posed by these spacecraft as they move about in an internationally assigned box about 50 miles on a side.

The most key GSSAP mission, however, is to make sure no Russian and Chinese spacecraft —or their orbiting ASAT systems—pose threats to U.S. and allied satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They include:

—American and allied military communications satellites

—National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Elint/Sigint eavesdropping satellites

— Air Force missile warning spacecraft

—NASA and NRO relay satellites

—NASA and NOAA scientific satellites

— U. S. and allied civilian communications spacecraft

According to the Air Force the GSSAP project was developed “to achieve an operational space-based situational awareness capability operating in the near-geosynchronous orbit regime to deliver data to the U.S. Strategic Command.”

GASSP operates in a team effort “with ground-based telescopes and radars to keep track of space objects and identify potential threats to U.S. satellites,” the Air Force said.

According to Spaceflight 101.com, “The project was developed covertly and the identity of the satellites was a secret until the program was declassified in early 2015.”

The first two satellites launched were to undergo a year of testing, but were pressed into service early on a secret mission to image a specific spacecraft, either foreign or U.S.

Air Force General John Hyten, commander of Space Command, told an Air Force Assn. meeting that when pressed into service early, the satellites “performed remarkably.”

“The users that requested the information are extremely pleased with the pictures we gave them,” Hyten said. “The pictures are truly eye-watering,” he told an Air Force Association press conference. “It’s amazing, you don’t often get to see satellites flying in space.” Other Air Force sources said centimeter scale resolution is necessary for examination of satellite antennas and sensors.

As initially conceived the Air Force believed the first pair would fly with one satellite above and the other below the geosynchronous plane. But the SeeSat-L satellite tracking group, headed by Canadian Ted Molczan, has found sometimes both operational satellites have also operated below the geosynchronous belt. Molczan also said sometimes the spacecraft have operated in tandem and other times while widely separated.

He said the GSSAP-1 satellite has been drifting at a velocity of one-half to a full degree per day, while GSSAP-2 has flown more slowly at one-fourth to one-third of a degree per day, occasionally pausing for observations at a single location.

Each GSSAP was developed from the Orbital ATK GEOStar-1 bus that weighs 1,102 lbs, with the capability to carry an additional 330 lb-sensor payload, including high resolution imaging sensors and possibly top secret eavesdropping electronics. This means that each spacecraft with the bus and payload combined weighs about 1,430 lbs.

These are extremely high performance satellites with large propellant tanks, giving each satellite 3,281 fps of maneuvering capability. The GEOStar bus with “precision pointing, knowledge, and agility combined with a large delta-v capacity make it a premier spacecraft for small GEO missions,” says an Orbital ATK marketing document.

http://www.americaspace.com/?p=94867