Space Detection and Tracking System, or SPADATS, was built in 1960 to integrate defense systems built by different branches of the

United States Armed Forces The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...

and was placed under

North American Aerospace Defense Command North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD ), known until March 1981 as the North American Air Defense Command, is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and protection ...

(NORAD). The

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...

had a program called Spacetrack, which was a network of space-probing cameras and radar. The

Navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

had a system called SPASUR, a space surveillance system that was "an electronic fence" the protected the southern United States. SPADATS was developed by the SpaceTrack Research and Development Facility, also called the 496L System Program Office, at

Hanscom Field Laurence G. Hanscom Field , commonly known as Hanscom Field, is a public use airport operated by the Massachusetts Port Authority, located outside Boston in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. Hanscom is mainly a general aviation airport, ...

Bedford, Massachusetts Bedford is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of Bedford was 14,383 at the time of the 2020 United States Census. History ''The following compilation comes from Ellen Abrams (1999) based on information ...

. ( Bendix,

Sperry Rand Sperry Corporation was a major American equipment and electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the 20th century. Sperry ceased to exist in 1986 following a prolonged hostile takeover bid engineered by Burroughs ...

and

Hughes Hughes may refer to: People * Hughes (surname) * Hughes (given name) Places Antarctica * Hughes Range (Antarctica), Ross Dependency * Mount Hughes, Oates Land * Hughes Basin, Oates Land * Hughes Bay, Graham Land * Hughes Bluff, Victoria La ...

competed for SPADATS contract in the early 1962 on the basis of their prior experience in

phased array In antenna theory, a phased array usually means an electronically scanned array, a computer-controlled array of antennas which creates a beam of radio waves that can be electronically steered to point in different directions without moving th ...

technology.) It first operated at the Electronic Systems Command building at Hanscom and in 1963 was transferred to the

Ent Air Force Base Ent Air Force Base was a United States Air Force base located in the Knob Hill neighborhood of Colorado Springs, Colorado. A tent city, established in 1943 during construction of the base, was initially commanded by Major General Uzal Girard ...

and then to the

Cheyenne Mountain Complex The Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a Space Force installation and defensive bunker located in unincorporated El Paso County, Colorado, next to the city of Colorado Springs, at the Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, which hosts the activities of ...

in 1965 or 1966. From that point, the SpaceTrack Research and Development Facility continued to build and test new software, manage contracts for hardware and software, and operate as a backup facility. SPADATS was developed in assembly language and the hardware at all three locations was Philco 2000/Model 212 large scale

transistor computer A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, ...

s. Spiral Decay, a Special Perturbation Program, was used to model the motion of space objects re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Project 437 used a second Special Perturbation Program called ESPOD. SPADATS remained operational until about 1980 at Cheyenne Mountain. Some of its logic, though continued on in

Space Defense Operations Center The Space Defense Center (SDC) was a space operation center of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. It was successively housed at two Colorado locations, Ent Air Force Base, followed by Cheyenne Mountain Complex#Improvements, Cheyenne Mou ...

(SPADOC) systems.

References

{{reflist NORAD systems Space Detection