US Army microsatellite heads to space to aid war fighters on the ground

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By: Jen Judson 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — A U.S. Army microsatellite demonstrator is hitching a ride aboard a SpaceX Dragon on a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.

Roughly the size of a minifridge, the satellite — along with 6,400 pounds of supplies and equipment on the spacecraft, which launched Monday at 12:31 p.m. EDT — will reach the station on Wednesday.

Kestrel Eye is a small, low-cost optical imaging satellite demonstrator that will test the utility of microsatellites in low-Earth orbit, providing images to war fighters on the ground at the tactical level during critical operations, according to Chip Hardy, the Kestrel Eye program manager at the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, or SMDC, and Army Forces Strategic Command’s Technical Center.

While the objective system would provide images rapidly directly to the ground war fighter, the demonstrator will transmit images to a ground station at SMDC in Huntsville, Ala., and to a ground station in the U.S. Pacific Command, or PACOM, area of operation, Hardy told Defense News last week at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.

The images won’t be HDTV-crisp but will be transmitted at a “tactically useful resolution,” Hardy said.

“The major benefit is not high-quality imagery,” Hardy said, but it brings to the table imagery fast enough to provide a unit about to begin operations real-time information about conditions on the ground where a mission is set to occur.

The satellite is expected to stay in orbit for roughly a year, but an objective system would be able to fly at a higher altitude and for a longer period of time.