PETERSON SPACE FORCE BASE, Colo. – U.S. Space Force space surveillance experts needed to maintain and upgrade three key integrated sensors to keep watch on objects orbiting Earth. They found a solution from L3Harris Technologies Inc.
Officials of the Space Systems Command at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo., announced a $62.7 million order to L3Harris in Colorado Springs, Colo., for engineering sustainment option year seven of these space-observation sensor systems.
These systems are the AN/FPS-85 Eglin Radar at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.; the Ground-based Electro Optical Deep Space Surveillance Telescope (GEODSS) at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.; and the Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) in Exmouth, Australia.
The AN/FPS-85 Eglin Radar is the world's most powerful phased-array radar system with 32 megawatts peak power. It tracks basketball-sized objects as high as geosynchronous orbit about 22,000 nautical miles above the Earth, and handles 30 percent of the U.S. Space Surveillance Network's workload.
Surveillance fences
The Eglin radar can make more than 16 million observations yearly. Built in the 1960s, it scans surveillance fences along the horizon in automated 50-millisecond cycles.
The GEODSS electro-optical telescopes use ground-based visible-light telescopes for deep-space object detection to provide all-weather, day-night tracking of manmade orbital objects. The system provides complementary radar data for the Joint Space Operations Center.
The SST is a 3.5-meter Mersenne-Schmidt optical telescope for wide-field searches for faint deep-space debris and satellites. It uses curved charge-coupled device arrays for rapid imaging.
This order brings the total value of the contract to $1.5 billion. L3Harris will do the work in Colorado Springs, Colo., and should be finished by January 2027. For more information contact L3Harris online at www.l3harris.com/capabilities/space, or Space Systems Command at www.petersonschriever.spaceforce.mil.
