The Pentagon’s looking to send way more satellites beyond the skies. To do it, though, it’s starting on the highway — by using race car parts to make spacecraft construction quicker and cheaper than it is today.
In a new announcement, Darpa’s asking myriad organizations — including the medical community and the NASCAR set — to help them come up with cheap, disposable satellites that can provide on-demand overhead imagery for soldiers in remote locales.
Right now, the military simply doesn’t have enough satellites to make that kind of footage available, not to mention the mobile technology to let soldiers download satellite images no matter where they are. And right now, it can take the military years to develop and launch a single satellite, by which time the tech is “outdated if not obsolete,” says Brian Weeden, a former officer with the U.S. Air Force Space Command. “The current acquisition system is very rigid, inflexible, and doesn’t allow for a lot of innovation.”
Darpa’s intent on changing that. Its new program, called SeeMe (short for “Space Enabled Effects of Military Engagement”), would culminate with “a constellation” of two dozen satellites, moving in a low orbit and transmitting imagery to soldiers in the field. To do it, though, the agency’s going to have to cut costs — which is why it’s turning to commercial industries, like car racing, which are quicker than the Pentagon to innovate.
The program is one of a handful of Pentagon-backed ventures that are trying to make satellites less expensive and easier to launch — and therefore much more ubiquitous in the skies overhead. Back in November, Darpa kicked off a $145 million project that’d eliminate the need for pricey ground-based satellite launchpads, and instead deploy sats from subsonic airliners. And the Air Force has been pushing similar goals, most notably with their first-ever Operationally-Responsive Space mission (ORS-1) which blasted off last year. The spy sat took less than 30 months to develop, and had a price tag under $100 million.
“ORS has been successful in developing and launching a satellite in a couple years and for [less money],” Weeden acknowledges. “But it is still not nearly as fast or cheap as the military needs.”
Indeed, Darpa wants each satellite to cost less than $500,000, compared to the tens (if not hundreds) of millions it costs now. Plus, it expects to replace the spacecraft with remarkable frequency: Each one would be designed to spend less than three months in orbit. After that, the satellites would de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere. Among Darpa’s cost-cutting measures for cheap, disposable satellites: nitrous oxide propulsion gear from the racing industry and medical valves initially developed for hospital oxygen tanks.
Aside from saving mad bank, SeeMe’s overall goal is to give soldiers more mission-planning data. Ideally, Darpa wants soldiers to snag satellite footage “by hitting a button called ‘SeeMe’” on “existing handheld devices,” according to a statement from Dave Barnhart, the program’s manager. Barnhart doesn’t specify what kinds of gadget the agency hopes to use, but it’s worth noting that the Army’s smartphone prototype, finally unveiled in October, will include mission planning tools and mapping apps that might get a significant boost from more robust satellite imagery.
No doubt, the pursuit of rapid, on-demand satellite footage is pretty damn ambitious — especially considering that the Pentagon’s still trying to master rechargeable handheld gadgets and wireless datatransmission, both of which would probably be necessary for this scheme to work. Mad satellite scientists: Start your engines! LINK
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