Experimental Satellite Brings Lab Into GEO

The U.S. Space Force’s successful August 12 launch of National Security Space Launch program assets on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Vulcan Centaur V rocket was groundbreaking on several accounts. First, having ULA be the carrier of classified satellites to geosynchronous orbit (GEO)—about 22,000 miles above the Earth’s equator—provided the Space Force a second option for such launches in addition to SpaceX. This was the first National Security Space Launch on the Vulcan Centaur rocket, and it was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

More importantly, the $250 million effort features the first experimental satellite in 48 years.

“We are excited to be here today, a historic point in our program history,” said Col. Jim Horne, USSF, the mission director and senior materiel leader for the launch, during a Space Systems Command media call in August. Following the successful launch, Horne stepped into his role, leading spacelift and range operations as the commander of Space Launch Delta 30 and the Western Launch and Test Range at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. 

Dubbed the USSF-106 mission, the Vulcan Centaur carried classified payloads, including the so-called Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), and reportedly another classified satellite, straight into GEO orbit, after a seven-hour journey. 

The Centaur V upper stage rocket, which included four solid rocket boosters and two of Blue Origin’s BE-4 liquid rocket engines, also enabled a move away from an adversary’s engine capability.

“We officially end our reliance on Russian-made [rocket] engines with this launch,” Horne said. “And we continue to maintain our assured access to space with at least two independent rocket service companies that we can leverage to get our capabilities on orbit.”

Gary Wentz, vice president of government and commercial programs for ULA, welcomed the launch after several long delays. 

“This mission is extremely important to ULA,” Wentz noted. “This will be the most powerful Vulcan yet. And it will be one of our longest missions to date. It was purposely designed to support these national security missions and go directly to GEO for the Space Force.”

Led by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the Space Force will conduct about 100 experiments with the NTS-3 satellite over the next year related to position, navigation and timing (PNT), GPS and other capabilities, said Joanna Hinks, senior research aerospace engineer, Air Force Research Laboratory. 

Most notably, NTS-3 will be able to connect signals not only from GEO but also lower-Earth orbit and mid-Earth orbit.

“We are experimenting with how to have more than one orbit so that we are no longer constrained to only be in GEO for the PNT mission,” Hinks clarified. “One of the things that you do get out of GEO is that you have at least one satellite in view that is persistent in a given part of the world, and that offers some unique opportunities because we can experiment with concepts that we call augmentation, where you’re still receiving GPS signals, but then you have additional signals that are coming from the NTS-3 satellite in GEO that can provide additional information that helps in a supporting role for the GPS signals.”

Andrew Builta, vice president of strategy and business development and program management excellence, L3Harris Technologies, emphasized that NTS-3 will demonstrate the best next-generation technologies on orbit and help develop new techniques for space operations, the ground control and user equipment segments.

“NTS-3 was designed to be modular, scalable and make use of investments by commercial industry,” Builta said. “This allows the payload components to be configured for diverse applicability to unique requirements.”

The experimental satellite will be the first U.S. navigation system to integrate advanced array technologies that can focus powerful beams on forces on the ground as well as combat jamming environments, he added.

Another key feature of the satellite is the reprogrammable nature of its receiver, so experiments can change as more technologies are developed across multiple time scales, Hinks and Builta said.

“Its signal processors provide unprecedented flexibility to support different signal types and strengths, and it is capable of being reprogrammed on orbit,” Builta said. “This is a truly game-changing capability.”

In addition, the experiments will demonstrate how quickly and efficiently new signals can be added after satellite delivery. “What historically required a new satellite block of production and design can now be added within a few weeks,” he noted.

For example, the AFRL and the Space Force will conduct experiments involving the AFRL-developed Counter-Electronic High-Power Microwave Extended Range Air Base Air Defense system, or CHIMERA (chips–message robust authentication) signal, the GPS spoofing-resistant filtering signal enhancement effort. Hinks noted that after the CHIMERA experiments, the AFRL hopes to share the results with universities and other international partners.

And naturally, the scientists will test the transmission of certain information from the satellite to receive it on the ground, followed by a lot of processing.

“Some of those will be in a lab, where we are piping signals into a lab to do our processing, and some of them we anticipate would be in a field environment, where we are trying to replicate conditions that the warfighter might experience,” Hinks said. “Also, particularly when it comes to clocks and timekeeping, we have experiments that are taking place on board the satellite, and we are piping that data down to be looked at.”

Regarding the progression of experiments over the next year, the AFRL and the Space Force will begin with efforts “that are more of a calibration and characterization nature, understanding our system, knowing how it works,” Hinks stated.

Once the scientists are confident in the system operations, they will start experimenting with the simpler and more straightforward capabilities, followed by more complicated activities that involve integrating several technologies together into a demonstration.

Hinks expects the hardest set of experiments will involve the phased array antenna.

“It is a complicated system, so there are a lot of different aspects that we have to control in order to take in good data,” she stated. “From an engineering perspective, the hardest thing is making that reprogrammability work across all the segments and operate in a seamless fashion.” 

After the year-long experimental mission, the AFRL and the Space Force will see if other organizations could use NTS-3 for other testing purposes—assuming the spacecraft still has more lifespan.

“At AFRL, every satellite we fly is a one-off,” Hinks noted. “We don’t do things that we’ve done before. Hopefully, within a few weeks here, we should be able to start collecting data.”

For Horne, the USSF-106 mission is only one of many that the Space Force is pursuing to ensure national security and assured space operations for the U.S. military. “We have a backlog of missions that we are working through,” Horne noted.

One of those efforts, the USSF-36 mission, followed shortly after on August 21, with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch also from Cape Canaveral that carried the eighth X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle for the Space Force’s work with the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (AFRCO), the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Innovation Unit.

The launch was another National Security Space Launch mission and was part of a Phase 2, 2021 contract effort with SpaceX.

“This was the service’s fourth NSSL Phase 2 mission so far this year, and we have more coming right behind it,” said Col. Ryan Hiserote, senior materiel leader, Launch Execution, Assured Access to Space, Space Systems Command. “In fact, we have more missions queued for launch over the next 12 months than in any prior 12-month period in the history of the NSSL program . . . and we welcome this challenge. Putting innovative capabilities such as these in orbit builds United States strength in the space domain and increases our nation’s overall warfighting capability.”

Highly classified, the X-37B vehicle test bed will enable “a wide range of test and experimentation objectives,” the Space Force indicated in an August 14 statement. 

This includes demonstrations of high-bandwidth inter-satellite laser communications and enhanced space navigation using a high-performance space-based quantum inertial sensor.

“The Orbital Test Vehicle 8 exemplifies the X-37B’s status as the U.S. Space Force’s premier test platform for the critical space technologies of tomorrow. Through its mission-focused innovation, the X-37B continues to redefine the art of the possible in the final frontier of space,” said AFRCO Acting Director William Blauser.

“Putting innovative capabilities such as these in orbit builds United States strength in the space domain and increases our nation’s overall warfighting capability,” Hiserote stated.