Space Force to loft 2 new ‘neighborhood watch’ sats, as leader frets launch funds

WASHINGTON: The Space Force is set this afternoon for its first launch in 2022 under the National Security Space Launch program, with two new Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites aboard.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond told the Mitchell Institute on Tuesday that the maneuverable GSSAP satellites have “a really important mission” in helping to establish space domain awareness (SDA).

The program has allowed the Space Force to move from just simply locating space objects — finding “an address for something in space” — to being able to have “insights into what those capabilities are” in the critical GEO orbit, he said. (Geosynchronous Orbit, some 36,000km up, is where most communications satellites are stationed, as well as the bulk of US missile warning sats.)

Raymond was vague on how the two new GSSAP birds, built by Northrop Grumman, would differ from their predecessors. The first two GSSAPs launched in 2014, the second pair in 2016.

“When you look at the geosynchronous domain, it’s a very large volume of space that you have to cover and this provides additional capacity for us,” Raymond said.

A spokesperson for Space Systems Command elaborated on Thursday, telling Breaking Defense that “GSSAP-5 and -6 will provide improved SDA data to the National Space Defense Center and other national users to enhance our ability to navigate freely and safely within the GEO belt.” Meanwhile, the spokesperson noted in an email, the other four GSSAPs continue to operate.

GSSAP satellites not only act as a passive “neighborhood watch” keeping tabs on the activities of other spacecraft and dangerous debris in GEO, but also can, and do, move up close and personnel to adversary satellites to assess their functions. In fact, while the US government has complained loudly about close approaches to US military and commercial satellite by Russian and Chinese “inspector” spacecraft, the GSSAPs have been doing exactly the same thing in reverse.

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Private space launch firm ULA will be using an Atlas V to loft the GSSAPs. Currently, the legacy rocket is the only heavy-lifter the company has to reach GEO.

ULA and SpaceX nabbed the hard-fought NSSL phase 2 awards in 2020, each with a first contract to cover launches through 2024. The NSSL plan was for ULA to begin using its new heavy-lift rocket, the Vulcan, this year.

However, the company has been frustrated by the failure of its partner, Blue Origin, to finish production of its BE-4 engine — a replacement for the Russian RD-180 engine that Congress has barred from US use as of the end of this year. Tory Bruno, ULA’s CEO, told CNBC last month that he now expects the first BE-4s to show up sometime early this year.

The Space Force fiscal 2022 budget request for launch vehicles included $1.34 billion in procurement dollars to cover five NSSL Phase 2 missions, up $341 million from last year’s request.

However, with the Defense Department’s spending bill still caught up in partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill, Raymond has repeatedly warned that the service’s NSSL launch manifest could be chopped to three if a year-long continuing resolution (CR) comes to pass. Under a CR, Pentagon spending across the board would be capped at 2021 levels.

“If we were to get a budget in February, we would continue with our five,” he said Tuesday. “If we were into a long-term CR, we’d have to reduce two of those five launches.”

Further, because the Space Force schedules NSSL launches two years in advance, Raymond added, shifting two launches planned for this year to 2023 would cause more delays down the road — at a time when the service is scrambling to get new and improved capabilities on orbit in the face of the increase in potential threats from Russian and Chinese anti-satellite developments.

“It would have a ripple effect for years to come,” Raymond fretted.