Two prototype satellites for the Missile Defense Agency and 4 missile-tracking satellites for the US Space Force rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit Wednesday from Florida’s Space Coast.

These satellites are a part of a brand new era of spacecraft designed to trace hypersonic missiles launched by China or Russia and maybe rising missile threats from Iran or North Korea, that are growing their very own hypersonic weapons.

Hypersonic missiles are smaller and extra maneuverable than typical ballistic missiles, which the US army’s legacy missile protection satellites can detect once they launch. Infrared sensors on the army’s older-generation missile monitoring satellites are tuned to pick vibrant thermal signatures from missile exhaust.

The New Threat Paradigm

Hypersonic missiles signify a brand new problem for the Space Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). For one factor, ballistic missiles comply with a predictable parabolic trajectory that takes them into area. Hypersonic missiles are smaller and relatively dim, they usually spend extra time flying in Earth’s ambiance. Their maneuverability makes them troublesome to trace.

A virtually five-year-old army group known as the Space Development Agency (SDA) has launched 27 prototype satellites over the past 12 months to show the Pentagon’s idea for a constellation of tons of of small, comparatively low-cost spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. This new fleet of satellites, which the SDA calls the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, will ultimately quantity tons of of spacecraft to trace missiles and relay information about their flight paths right down to the bottom. The monitoring information will present an early warning to these focused by hypersonic missiles and assist generate a firing resolution for interceptors to shoot them down.

The SDA constellation combines typical tactical radio hyperlinks, laser inter-satellite communications, and wide-view infrared sensors. The company, now a part of the Space Force, plans to launch successive generations, or tranches, of small satellites, every introducing new know-how. The SDA’s strategy depends on commercially out there spacecraft and sensor know-how and will probably be extra resilient to assault from an adversary than the army’s typical area belongings. Those legacy army satellites usually value tons of of tens of millions or billions of {dollars} apiece, with architectures that depend on small numbers of enormous satellites that may appear as if a sitting duck to an adversary decided to inflict injury.

Four of the small SDA satellites and two bigger spacecraft for the Missile Defense Agency had been aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket when it lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 5:30 pm EST (2230 UTC) Wednesday.

The rocket headed northeast from Cape Canaveral to position the six payloads into low-Earth orbit. Officials from the Space Force declared the launch a hit later Wednesday night.

The SDA’s 4 monitoring satellites, constructed by L3Harris, are the final spacecraft the company will launch in its prototype constellation, known as Tranche 0. Beginning later this 12 months, the SDA plans to kick off a rapid-fire launch marketing campaign with SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to shortly construct out its operational Tranche 1 constellation, with launches set to happen at one-month intervals to deploy roughly 150 satellites. Then, there will probably be a Tranche 2 constellation with extra superior sensor applied sciences.

The major payloads aboard Wednesday’s launch had been for the Missile Defense Agency. These two Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites, one equipped by L3Harris and the opposite by Northrop Grumman, will reveal medium field-of-view sensors. Those sensors cannot cowl as a lot territory because the SDA satellites however will present extra delicate and detailed missile monitoring information.