Mary-Louise Hoffman
Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force have assessed the design of a ground-based S-band surveillance system the company is building to help the military service monitor orbiting space objects.
The company and Air Force are constructing Space Fence System on Kwajalein Island in the Pacific Ocean and the branch determined the radar to be technically mature following the critical design review process, Lockheed said Monday.
Lockheed won the contract to build Space Fence in June 2014.
Lockheed uses gallium nitride-based monolithic microwave integrated circuits to engineer the radar arrays.
The Air Force aims to detect and catalog space objects more than 1.5 million times daily and forecast space-based collisions through Space Fence.
According to Lockheed, the surveillance platform will be housed in a facility designed to withstand strong winds and seismic events and could achieve initial operating capability status in late 2018.
