FROM: U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENTOfficials Expand Space-tracking Website
By Amaani Lyle
DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, Aug. 25, 2014 – Defense Department officials announced additions to its space situational awareness program’s Space-Track.org website.
In a recent telephone interview with DoD News, Air Force Maj. Gen. David D. Thompson, U.S. Strategic Command’s director of plans and policy at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, said the release of new high-quality positional information on space debris of an unknown origin will help owner-operators better protect their satellites from these objects and ultimately create less space debris.
“We run a predictive program that shows where the objects are, where they will be in the future, and the potential for these objects to run into each other,” Thompson said.
Thompson explained that most of the debris that is considered “objects of unknown origin” resulted from launches or space collisions, but has not been definitively identified by source.
Thousands of space objects
The Joint Functional Component Command for Space at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California currently tracks more than 17,000 objects in space on a continuous basis, Thompson said. Among those objects, he said, about 1,100 are active satellites currently conducting operations.
The average person has a lot more invested in space than he or she may realize, Thompson said.
“We have more than 30 GPS satellites on orbit today providing global navigation and positioning for the world,” the general said.
With modern smart phones offering so many diverse functions, the loss of connectivity and functionality could cripple a fair amount of consumers in the United States and abroad.
“Networks that run those and the timing required to keep them all in sync is enabled through the global positioning system that every U.S. citizen and just about every advanced global citizen depends on,” Thompson said.
Yet it is the other approximately 16,000 objects -- the ones not active and/or of unknown origin in space -- that JFCC Space and Stratcom are most concerned with.
Objects present collision threat
Many objects, ranging from at least the size of the human fist to as large as the international space station, which is slightly larger than a full-sized soccer field, continue to pose a collision threat in space, Thompson said.
“There is also a high volume of debris smaller than the average fist that [JFCC Space] cannot track that are also on orbit today,” he said.
With old satellites and debris orbiting at thousands of miles per hour, the probability of a collision poses a threat to the continuing mission of operational satellites.
Exchange of space information
While some active satellites are not maneuverable, JFCC Space officials said they try to inform the owners of all satellites that they may want to take action to reduce the likelihood of collision.
“Exchanging information allows spacefaring organizations to take action to reduce the risk of a collision that could generate hundreds of thousands of pieces of additional space debris,” said Lt. Gen. John W. Raymond, JFCC Space commander. “JFCC Space shares information globally because it is in everyone’s best interest to ensure the safety of the space domain.”
An example of space cluttering occurred in 2007, Thompson said, when the Chinese conducted an anti-satellite weapons test and almost immediately created 1,500 new objects that pose a risk to satellites in orbit.
Stratcom tracks space objects
And after the collision of an inoperable spacecraft with a commercial communications satellite in 2009, Stratcom took on the role for the world in keeping track of such objects and providing that warning to others to prevent the situation from worsening, Thompson said.
“We have the assigned responsibility for planning and conducting space operations,” said Navy Adm. Cecil D. Haney, Stratcom’s commander.
“By sharing previously unavailable information on space objects, we’re helping nations that operate in space to do so safely and effectively,” Haney added. “It is one way we fulfill our assigned space mission for the U.S. and its allies, while also protecting capabilities important to citizens around the world.”
Yet it is a mission that extends beyond the average civilian.
Warfighters depend on satellites
Joint warfighters depend on advanced warning such as missile launch or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from satellite systems, Thompson said.
“It’s understanding what’s there [in space], what [the object] is doing, and how it poses a threat to our military mission, to our ability to support joint forces and contribute to the global good,” the general said. “While space is a very big place, there are a lot of things up there.”
As such, for several years, JFCC Space has been responsible for monitoring, coordinating and synchronizing space operations for the Department of Defense.
“We are the single point of contact for U.S. military space operational matters,” Raymond said. “We are not, however, the only ones who operate in that environment.”
Many organizations in space
Many public, private, commercial and other governmental organizations conduct space operations.
“Space is not owned by anyone, it is used by all and we strongly support responsible and safe use of space and transparency of operations that go on in space,” Thompson said.
Reversing congestion and pollution in space, he said, is a complex task.
“We are talking decades or centuries before the environment will clean itself naturally so we have to share and act responsibly with this precious resource because it’s important to all of us,” Thompson said.
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Showing posts with label GPS SATELLITES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GPS SATELLITES. Show all posts
Sunday, August 31, 2014
U.S. MILITARY EXPANDS SPACE-TRACKING WEBSITE TO LOOK FOR DEBRIS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
NSF ON "NEW CLOCKING TECHNOLOGIES"
FROM: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Revolutionizing how we keep track of time in cyber-physical systems
New five-year, $4 million Frontier award aims to improve the coordination of time in networked physical systems
Examples of cyber-physical systems include autonomous cars, aircraft autopilot systems, tele-robotics devices and energy-efficient buildings, among many others.
The grant brings together expertise from five universities and establishes a center-scale research activity to improve the accuracy, efficiency, robustness and security with which computers maintain knowledge of time and synchronize it with other networked devices in the emerging "Internet of Things."
Time has always been a critical issue in science and technology. From pendulums to atomic clocks, the accurate measurement of time has helped drive scientific discovery and engineering innovation throughout history. For example, advances in distributed clock synchronization technology enabled GPS satellites to precisely measure distances. This, in turn, created new opportunities and even entirely new industries, enabling the development of mobile navigation systems. However, many other areas of clock technology are still ripe for development.
Time synchronization presents a particular fundamental challenge in emerging applications of CPS, which connect computers, communication, sensors and actuator technologies to objects and play a critical role in our physical and network infrastructure. Cyber-physical systems depend on precise knowledge of time to infer location, control communication and accurately coordinate activities. They are critical to real-time situational awareness, security and control in a broad and growing range of applications.
"The National Science Foundation has long supported research to integrate cyber and physical systems and has supported the experimentation and prototyping of these systems in a number of different sectors--from transportation and energy to medical systems," said Farnam Jahanian, head of NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "As the 'Internet of Things' becomes more pervasive in our lives, precise timing will be critical for these systems to be more responsive, reliable and efficient."
The NSF award will support a project called Roseline, which seeks to develop new clocking technologies, synchronization protocols, operating system methods, as well as control and sensing algorithms. The project is led by engineering faculty from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and includes electrical engineering and computer science faculty from the University of California, San Diego; Carnegie Mellon University; the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.
"Through the Roseline project, we will drive cyber-physical systems research with a deeper understanding of time and its trade-offs and advance the state-of-the-art in clocking circuits and platform architectures," said UCLA professor Mani Srivastava, principal investigator on the project.
Today, most computing systems use tiny clocks to manage time in a relatively simplistic and idealized fashion. For example, software in today's computers has little visibility into, and control over, the quality of time information received from its underlying hardware. At the same time, the clocks have little, if any, knowledge of the quality of time needed by the software, nor any ability to adapt to it. This leaves computing systems that are dependent on time vulnerable to complex and catastrophic disruptions.
The Roseline team will address this problem by rethinking and re-engineering how the knowledge of time is handled across a computing system's hardware and software.
"Roseline will drive accurate timing information deep into the software system," said Rajesh Gupta, University of California, San Diego computer science and engineering chair and a co-principal investigator on the project. "It will enable robust distributed control of smart grids, precise localization of structural faults in bridges and ultra-low-power wireless sensors."
Roseline will have a broad impact across many sectors, including smart electrical grids, aerospace systems, precision manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, safety systems and infrastructure monitoring.
In addition to Srivastava and Gupta, the Roseline team includes Sudhakar Pamarti of UCLA, João Hespanha of UC Santa Barbara, Ragunathan Rajkumar and Anthony Rowe of Carnegie Mellon University and Thomas Schmid of the University of Utah.
Beyond the research and testing of components, project leaders plan to integrate CPS and timing components into graduate and undergraduate course materials and engage pre-college students in outreach efforts, including the Los Angeles Computing Circle, which focuses on teaching real-world applications of computer science to students from local high schools.
"The measurement, distribution and synchronization of time have always been critical in science and technology, and there is a long history of new time-related technologies revolutionizing society," said David Corman, NSF program director for CPS. "As computation becomes embedded in the physical systems around us, it becomes all the more important that computers be able to know time accurately, efficiently and reliably. I am excited to see the Roseline team undertake this challenging and important task."
NSF's long-standing support for CPS research and education spans a range of awards amounting to an investment of nearly $200 million during the last five years.
-NSF-
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