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Intelsat: ‘We’d put a sensor on every satellite’
April 2nd, 2009 | National Space Symposium | Posted by Michael Hoffman
Richard DalBello, a vice president with Intelsat which has the world’s largest commercial satellite fleet, spoke with the Show Scout about space surveillance and the relationship between the space industry and the U.S. military on that issue.
Q: How is the relationship building between the U.S. military and the space industry in regards to improving space surveillance?
A: Last year at Strategic Space in Omaha, Neb., our CEO stood up and said we’d put a sensor on every satellite.
Q: What are some of the challenges you see with data sharing between commercial companies and the government?
A: The initial one is that it can’t interfere with the commercial mission. We wouldn’t be a sensor program. We’re not looking to replace a military program. What we’re saying is if you have developed optical or IR wave length sensor that would be relevant to this mission, and if you could supply it, we would be interested in putting them on our satellites. It’s a mutual benefit because obviously we would look to have some lease revenue from that but we’d also contribute data. Eventually you could have the whole geo-arc linked with sensor so you could have better awareness for what is going on.
Q:How far off is the military and space industry from making serious progress on relationship to collect large amounts of data from commercial satellites?
A: It’s a slow progress. It’s hard to get people to work across company boundaries and really hard to get people to work across international boundaries. We’re closer than anything on the data center, but we’re still not there yet. What we said is that if we can actually create this model where you could add other things, like you could easily add RF interference data on top of that. But there is a lot that goes into it. You have a lot of issues. You have to deal with all the legal issues and liability and identification. You have to deal with practical technical issues and validation of information. How do you know something is true.
Tags: Air Force, Intelsat, National Space Symposium 2009, space surveillance
14th AF commander: Space surveillance improving
March 31st, 2009 | National Space Symposium | Posted by Michael Hoffman
Lt. Gen. Larry James, 14th Air Force commander, sat down with Show Scout to discuss the progress of space surveillance and manning needs in Air Force Space Command.
Q: How can the Air Force improve its space surveillance?
A: The Air Force is going to improve their capability. That has been in the plans for awhile for space events. We have some experimentation going on in terms of bringing non space surveillance sensors into the network. Now the questions is: How do we take that data and convert it?
Q: How can the Air Force get there?
A: It’s just executing what we have on the books. We have Space Fence on the books so we have to move forward with that. We also have to make sure we move forward with [Space Based Space Surveillance] and we have the launch this summer. We have to move forward with that.
Q: How much is SBSS going to help?
A: That will help a lot because we will not be limited by geography or weather which is limiting now with the ground sensors. We will then be allowed to look at the geosynchronous belt all the time.
Tags: 14th Air Force, Lt. Gen. Larry James, space surveillance