天顶星技术来了，美国的“鹰眼”纳卫星

Grunts Get Spy Sats of Their Own



By David Hambling  December 1, 2009  |  1:18 pm

The Pentagon loves its giant satellites — the bigger and more expensive, the better. The culmination was Keyhole -12; at an estimated twenty tons, it’s believed to be about as large as the massive Hubble Space Telescope. But these orbiting behemoths are increasingly coming under criticism by those who believe the job can be done better, faster, and cheaper by constellations of small satellites. The new catch-phrase is Operationally Responsive Space Access. This is the source of the Army’s Kestrel Eye spy satellite program, which is exploring the possibilities offered by smaller sats.

Big satellites are expensive to build and launch. So you can only have a few of them in orbit at once. They may not be in the right place when you need them. Operationally Responsive Space is supposed to fix that, by sending satellites into space as needed, depending on the requirements at the time. Making them smaller and cheaper means that large numbers can be put up, giving continuous coverage rather than a snapshot with every ninety-minute orbit.

Kestrel Eye, which is being built by IntelliTech Microsystems, grew out of a Darpa project for a twenty-pound imaging satellite equipped with a ten-inch telescope. The downlink system can send back two images a second, each covering an area five miles square with a resolution of five feet. That does not count as high-resolution in the reconnaissance world, and it’s only about a tenth of what can be delivered by Keyhole-12. But it’s enough to identify individual building and vehicles. And that could be extremely helpful to the grunt on the ground.

“Kestrel Eye will be taskable directly by the warfighter under fire and transmit 1.5-meter resolution images directly to his backpackable ground station. A constellation of 30 satellites will provide global 24/7 coverage,” Steve Fujikawa, president of IntelliTech Microsystems Inc., told the Military Space and Missile Forum. But rather than being used by one unit, the imagery is likely to be fed into a set of imagery servers, so the pictures can be shared by any number of users.

As with other small satellites, the key is to make it cheap. Kestrel Eye is supposed to cost around $1 million per satellite. That’s a bargain, considering a Predator drone is about $5 million. Even a constellation of thirty of Kestrel Eyes will cost a fraction of a large satellite.

Kestrel Eye will be the Army’s second nanosatellite program. The first is an ongoing test project called SMDC One. It consists of eight satellites, each about the size of a tube of Pringles. SMDC One is aimed at proving the technology and some of the concepts involved in operating small satellites.

Major elements of Kestrel Eye, including the avionics and the solar power array, have already been prototyped. Other elements, including the camera and the data transmission system are expected to be ready for a launch in 2011. However, this will depend on an ongoing design review.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Kestrel Eye will be a new paradigm for satellite surveillance. If successful, it will open the way for much more small, cheap satellites. These could include more reconnaissance satellites with infra-red as well as visible-wavelength capability, as well as LADAR and other sensors. There is also the possibility of communications nanosatellites so that extra bandwidth can be added as needed.

It’s a bold new venture for the US Army. However, in this case the military is lagging somewhat behind the commercial world, where the potential of constellations smaller and more capable satellites is already being realized.

这个东东能够发现航母吧

小小大星球 发表于 2009-12-23 21:13


    重9千克的卫星项目
靠，可以拿当年的飞马直接发射了

小型的当然好处多多，战时使用优势更明显。但代替不了高分辨率大型卫星的作用。。

战术vs战略的互补关系

说穿了就是把全球鹰变成太空鹰了

估计就是一个在天上可以下载数据的照相机吧

确实便宜啊 100W美刀

本草纲目 发表于 2009-12-24 17:02


    我得挣多久才又100W USD啊？？

美帝的大锁眼肯定少不了！ 小卫星只起补充作用而已。

回复 9# youyouyou


   这个，   确实不能和MD比拉```，人家军费比小白兔多多了

当我没来过