A company with local ties is part of a federal program to increase the nation’s capabilities when it comes to protecting U.S. satellites.
Five satellites that were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, last week have the capability of tracking hypersonic missiles. Those are missiles that can fly beyond the range of the current technology for tracking ballistic missiles.
Employees of L3Harris Technologies in Rochester did testing for the new satellite, which is part of the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) program and the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 0 (T0) Tracking Layer program.
Paul Wloszek, general manager for missile defense at L3Harris, said there is a need to protect against new types of missile threats against U.S. satellites.
“What’s happened over the last decade or two is that our adversaries have made very specific advancements in what we call the hypersonic threat, which is essentially a threat that can fly through the atmosphere at very low altitudes and can avoid our radars and is hard to track,” Wloszek said.
“The hypersonic threat is real,” he added. “It’s being used operationally in the world today and getting these assets in orbit and demonstrating capability to the warfighter is really the call we’ve been asked to answer, and the team in Rochester did an awesome job.”
More than 100 L3Harris employees in Rochester worked on testing the new satellite technology for more than six months before last week’s launch. Some L3Harris employees were in Florida for the launch of the new satellites, and others around the country were watching a livestream of the event.
Coincidentally, the launch of the new missile-tracking satellites last week happened at about the same time there were reports about Russia’s potential ability to strike American satellites.
While not talking specifically about the capabilities of the new equipment that L3 Harris was involved in testing, Wloszek noted that satellites already provide crucial information for people all over the world, including banking, cellphones and GPS services.
