Scout Space, Dawn Aerospace partner for spaceplane surveillance demonstration

Dawn Aerospace's Mk-II Aurora Achieves Rocket-powered Flight

Dawn Aerospace’s Mk-II Aurora Achieves Rocket-powered Flight

WASHINGTON — Scout Space, a Virginia-based startup specializing in space domain awareness, has signed an agreement with Dawn Aerospace to demonstrate the ability to observe objects in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) from an aircraft operating in suborbital space. 

Under the deal announced Aug. 22, Scout will install its space domain awareness sensors aboard Dawn Aerospace’s Mk-II Aurora uncrewed suborbital spaceplane for a test flight targeted for November at the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre near Christchurch, New Zealand.

Dawn Aerospace, which has operations in the Netherlands and the United States in addition to New Zealand, developed the Mk-II Aurora as a reusable spaceplane that takes off and lands horizontally like a conventional aircraft, eliminating the need for dedicated launch pads.

The Mk-II Aurora during its test campaign is expected to fly at supersonic speeds at altitudes of up to 80,000 feet, and its goal is to fly to 100 kilometers  to reach the Kármán line, the boundary of space.

Scout’s agreement with Dawn covers several test flights that would serve as demonstrations for Scout’s Sparrow sensors, which will look upward into the VLEO region from the Mk-II Aurora. VLEO is located approximately 100 to 450 kilometers above the Earth’s surface

“This would be a first-of-its-kind tactically responsive VLEO space domain awareness capability,” Scout’s CEO Philip Hover-Smoot told Spacenews.

Dawn Aerospace CEO Stefan Powell said the combination of a suborbital spaceplane and space domain awareness sensors “provides a level of effectiveness and resilience that surpasses what can be achieved by a satellite.”

If the demonstrations are successful, Scout intends to market the technology to the U.S. government as a low-cost option for intelligence-gathering missions that need to be done quickly, Hover-Smoot said.

The U.S. Space Force uses the X-37B spaceplane for space domain awareness experiments and has started a “responsive space” program to use commercial rockets to deploy surveillance payloads on short notice. But the concept using a commercial aircraft like Dawn’s “is a completely different reconfiguration of how we think about observing very low Earth orbit,” Hover-Smoot said.

Scout will integrate its Sparrow sensors into the Mk-II Aurora’s fuselage. The instruments will be housed in an open payload bay with an optical window, enabling them to observe VLEO from lower altitudes.  

Based on studies and simulations, he said, Scout believes objects in VLEO can be observed from lower altitudes with better fidelity than from satellites in higher orbits.

If the experiment succeeds, Scout will work with Dawn to pursue market opportunities. The first priority will be to overcome the technical hurdles of integrating a space sensor onto a reusable spaceplane, Hover-Smoot said.

“The economics are phenomenal,” he added. “But we want to go prove that it’s viable before we go try to sell it.”

Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense…


Note: This article have been indexed to our site. We do not claim legitimacy, ownership or copyright of any of the content above. To see the article at original source Click Here

Related Posts
New blue-and-yellow gecko found, named after Van Gogh thumbnail

New blue-and-yellow gecko found, named after Van Gogh

Half a world away and 133 years after Vincent van Gogh painted “The Starry Night,” the masterpiece sprang to Ishan Agarwal’s mind when he spied a small, colorful gecko among the rocks. In 2022, the biologist traveled to the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu, a rugged series of species-rich mountains running parallel
Read More
Delete your search history and become a digital ghost thumbnail

Delete your search history and become a digital ghost

This story has been updated. It was originally published on April 19, 2018. Every time you run a search online, the websites where you maintain an account can record that information. This data—collected and stored by search engines like Google, social media networks like Facebook, and retail giants like Amazon—won’t disappear when you erase your…
Read More
The price of the Candy dryer down sharply on Cdiscount!  (-310 €) thumbnail

The price of the Candy dryer down sharply on Cdiscount! (-310 €)

Les sèche-linges à condensation n'ont pas besoin d'être reliés vers l'extérieur puisqu'ils fonctionnent en circuit fermé, l'humidité est récupérée dans un bac que l'on vide après chaque utilisation. Ce type d'appareil est le plus répandu sur le marché. Cdiscount affiche le sèche-linge à condensation Candy CSC 9DE-47 à 389,99 € au lieu de 699,99 €. Le sèche-linge Candy…
Read More
US agencies investigate Navy fuel leak's effect on civilians thumbnail

US agencies investigate Navy fuel leak’s effect on civilians

HONOLULU (AP) — U.S. public health officials on Tuesday began investigating how civilians have been affected by the leakage of petroleum into Pearl Harbor's tap water from a Navy fuel storage facility.The Hawaii state Department of Health said it asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease…
Read More
Index Of News