TacSat-2 is the first in a series of U.S. military experimental technology and communication satellites.TacSat-2 (also known as JWS-D1 ((Joint Warfighting Space-Demonstrator 1) or RoadRunner)[2] was an experimental satellite built by the USAF's Air Force Research Laboratory with an operational life expected to be not more than one year as part of the "Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration" program.
Purpose
The TacSat series of experimental spacecraft are designed to allow military commanders on a battlefield to request and obtain imagery and other data from a satellite as it passes overhead. Collected data will be delivered to field commanders in minutes rather than hours or days. The sensor on TacSat-2 could collect color images sharp enough to distinguish ground objects as small as 1 meter in diameter.[3]
Systems
Satellites in the TacSat series were planned to use commercial or available launchers, and largely off-the-shelf components, in order to reduce costs.
Satellite bus
The satellite bus was built by MicroSat Systems Inc. (MSI) of Littleton, Colorado. The core avionics of the spacecraft including command and data handling, electrical power switching and distribution, and subsystem and payload interfaces was handled by an Integrated Avionics Unit (IAU) developed by Broad Reach Engineering. The spacecraft flight software consisted of the low level drivers, and bus manager functionality provided by Broad Reach Engineering, ADCS Software by ASI, and a number of higher level applications by third parties, most notably the Autonomous Tasking Experiment (ATE) by Interface & Control Systems.
Camera / telescope
TacSat-2 during integrationLaunch of TacSat-2
The developers originally asked for bids from contractors for a camera. These were priced at around US$10 million. The team then bought a high-end observatory telescope costing around US$20,000 and then spent about $2 million to design and build a camera sensor, delivering a sensor capable of 1m ground resolution.[4]
A signals intelligence payload, called the Target Indicator Experiment, detected radio wave emitters and could be used in concert with receivers on other platforms such as the US Navy's P-3C maritime patrol aircraft.
Space Innovation and Development Center – U.S. Space Force education, training, doctrine and test field commandPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets,
USAF (1 September 2006), TacSat-2 Micro Satellite(PDF), Air Force Research Laboratory, archived from the original(PDF) on 12 July 2007, retrieved 18 December 2006
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Cubesats are smaller. Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
