Thank you, everyone, for coming. It’s a tremendous honor to be here today with General Armagno, Air Commodore Pearson, and our other distinguished guests to celebrate the transition of DARPA’s Space Surveillance Telescope to Air Force Space Command.
SST is the latest example of DARPA’s commitment to a singular and enduring mission: to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security. That mission, and DARPA itself, date to the days after Sputnik first streaked around the Earth in 1957. Improving space situational awareness to protect the United States during the Cold War was one of DARPA’s original technology development efforts. Both DARPA and the Air Force have been crucial players defining the field—and defending the United States and her allies—ever since.
Since Sputnik launched the world into the Space Age, man-made satellites have become the foundation for modern communication, Earth observation, and other critical military, civilian, and commercial functions. Today, what once seemed to be an almost infinite—and infinitely empty—domain has become a congested and contested space, as more and more commercial activity is taking place on orbit, and as other nations are staking their claims in space.
The volume of space between the Earth’s surface out to geosynchronous orbit is enormous—equivalent to 240,000 times all the Earth’s oceans. Yet the number of objects calling that volume home is growing all the time—not just with satellites but with debris of all kinds, natural and manmade. And keeping track of it all is becoming a real-time, non-trivial challenge.
That is why the U.S. Department of Defense has made space situational awareness a top priority and why few areas of DARPA research are as important to the future of U.S. and global security as helping to secure this most strategic frontier.
Let me take a moment to put SST in larger context, because the spectacular instrument and capability we are celebrating today is really part of a larger, three-pronged DARPA space portfolio.
First, we are developing technologies to achieve routine, reliable, and affordable access to space. Our experimental Spaceplane program, XS-1, has the lofty goal of launching a reusable vehicle 10 times in 10 days. If we could really do this, we could seriously envision putting as many as 100 satellites into low Earth orbit in a 10-day period. This would fundamentally change how we think about space.
Second, we are striving to change the paradigm of satellite operations. Our Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program is developing a system to inspect, repair, relocate, and upgrade satellites in geosynchronous orbit to extend their mission lifetimes. Third, DARPA is creating capabilities for realizing real-time space domain awareness. Our OrbitOutlook and Hallmark programs envision unprecedented, real-time command, control, detection, and tracking of space assets. This is where SST fits in.
From its mountaintop perch here at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, this revolutionary optical telescope combines several groundbreaking technologies that are enabling much faster discovery and tracking of previously unseen or hard-to-find small objects. SST has moved space situational awareness from seeing only a few large objects at time through the equivalent of a soda straw, to a “windshield” view with 10,000 objects at a time, each as small as a softball. And it is fast! SST can search an area larger than the continental United States in seconds and survey the entire geosynchronous belt within its field of view—one quarter of the sky—multiple times in one night.
Now, as is always the case with DARPA programs, we did not bring this project to completion on our own—not by a long shot. You’ve heard already from our partners at MIT, but let me talk for a minute about our Service partner on this program—an organization I served with for many years, the U.S. Air Force.
As I mentioned, DARPA has worked closely with the Air Force since the Agency’s creation.
Precision strike…stealth…composite materials…now hypersonics and next-generation aircraft…these are just a few of the areas where the Air Force and DARPA have boldly invested in high-impact technologies.
Over the decades, DARPA and the Air Force have developed groundbreaking electro-optical and infrared high-resolution imaging systems for identifying and tracking objects in orbit. Together we pioneered the first operational use of laser illumination and ranging, adaptive optics, atmospheric compensation, and telescope automation. Using DARPA technology as a springboard, Air Force Space Command has gone on to develop its own string of game-changing technological firsts that have become essential tools for national security. That has included telescopes able to see more and fainter objects than ever before, and supercomputing hardware and software that distills mountains of data into actionable, real-time insight.
And now, we stand beside the newest pinnacle of space situational awareness technology. SST achieved first light and acquired its first images in February 2011. DARPA and Air Force Space Command completed SST’s initial military utility assessment in 2012, and every year since the telescope has become a more prolific and powerful tool for tracking small space objects as DARPA and MIT have continued to enhance the camera’s already astonishing specs.
Now Air Force Space Command is taking ownership of SST and has announced plans to operate it in Australia jointly with the Australian government where, as the newest dedicated sensor in the Space Surveillance Network, it will provide key observations of a strategic area of the geosynchronous belt that until now has remained largely out of view and unobserved. In Air Force Space Command and the Royal Australian Air Force, we at DARPA could not ask for more qualified and enthusiastic partners and we know SST is going to be in good hands.
In closing, I want to emphasize again how this day—and this remarkable assemblage of technology—could not happen without the imagination, collaboration, and commitment to excellence that was contributed by so many people. We’re honored to have four of the five DARPA SST program managers, past and present, here today, and we remember Roger Hall, who also contributed greatly to the program. But I also want to thank all the Service members, scientists, engineers, and others who, through their dedicated service over the years, have made possible all the advances this collaboration has fostered.
Thank you—all of you—for embracing DARPA’s spirit of invention, and for applying this spirit to the farthest orbital domains of space in defense of freedom.