Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance

The United States Space Surveillance Network detects, tracks, catalogs and identifies artificial objects orbiting Earth, e.g. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentation debris. The system is the responsibility of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, part of the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM).

Space surveillance accomplishes the following:

The SPACETRACK program represents a worldwide Space Surveillance Network (SSN) of dedicated, collateral, and contributing electro-optical, passive radio frequency (RF) and radar sensors. The SSN is tasked to provide space object cataloging and identification, satellite attack warning, timely notification to U.S. forces of satellite fly-over, space treaty monitoring, and scientific and technical intelligence gathering. The continued increase in satellite and orbital debris populations, as well as the increasing diversity in launch trajectories, non-standard orbits, and geosynchronous altitudes, necessitates continued modernization of the SSN to meet existing and future requirements and ensure their cost-effective supportability.

SPACETRACK also developed the systems interfaces necessary for the command and control, targeting, and damage assessment of a potential future U.S. anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) system. There is an Image Information Processing Center and Supercomputing facility at the Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS). The resources and responsibility for the HAVE STARE Radar System development were transferred to SPACETRACK from an intelligence program per Congressional direction in FY93.

The first formalized effort to catalog satellites occurred at Project Space Track, later known as the National Space Surveillance Control Center (NSSCC), located at Hanscom Field in Bedford, Massachusetts. The procedures used at the NSSCC were first reported in 1959 and 1960 by Wahl, who was the technical director of the NSSCC. In 1960, under Project Space Track, Fitzpatrick and Findley developed detailed documentation of the procedures used at the NSSCC. For the early history of satellite tracking, 1957–1961, see Project Space Track.

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