20th Space Control Squadron
The 20th Space Surveillance Squadron (20 SPSS) is a Space Delta 2 unit located at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida with the mission to execute multiplatform, tactical space warfighting domain characterization, recognition, and responsiveness to achieve 21st Space Wing and United States Space Command intent. The unit, formerly designated the 20th Space Control Squadron (20 SPCS), was renamed on 25 March 2022. History Eglin AFB Site C-6's squadron of the 9th Aerospace Defense Division activated in September 1968. and was turned over to Air Force Systems Command on 20 September 1968, and became operational in December 1968. Eglin Site C-6 was assigned to Aerospace Defense Command on 20 December 1968. In 1972 20% of the site's "surveillance capability…became dedicated to search for SLBMs" and was subsequently renamed the 20th Missile Warning Squadron (the USAF SLBM Phased Array Radar System was initiated in November 1972 by the JCS while the Army's MSR and PAR phased arrays fo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Space Surveillance
Space domain awareness is the study and monitoring of satellites orbiting the Earth. It involves the detection, tracking, cataloging and identification of artificial objects, i.e. active/inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, or fragmentation debris. Aims Space domain awareness accomplishes the following: * Predicting when and where a decaying space object will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere; * Preventing a returning space object, which to radar looks like a missile, from triggering a false alarm in missile-attack warning sensors; * Charting the present position of space objects and plot their anticipated orbital paths; * Detecting new human-made objects in space; * Producing a running catalogue of human-made space objects; * Determining which country owns a re-entering space object; * Informing countries whether or not objects may interfere with satellites and International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Asse ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cobra Dane
The AN/FPS-108 COBRA DANE is a PESA phased array radar installation operated by Raytheon for the United States Space Force (originally for the United States Air Force) at Eareckson Air Station on the island of Shemya, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. The system was built in 1976 and brought online in 1977 for the primary mission of gathering intelligence about Russia's ICBM program in support of verification of the SALT II arms limitation treaty. Its single face diameter phased array radar antenna faces the Kamchatka Peninsula and Russia's Kura Test Range. COBRA DANE operates in the 1215–1400 MHz band and can track items as small as a basketball sized drone at distances of several hundred miles. The "COBRA" designation indicates a general Defense Intelligence program and, in accordance with the Joint Electronics Type Designation System, the "AN/FPS-108" designation represents the 108th design of an Army-Navy fixed radar (pulsed) electronic device for searching. Descriptio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Diego Garcia
Diego Garcia is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago. It has been used as a joint UK–U.S. military base since the 1970s, following the expulsion of the Chagossians by the UK government. The Chagos Islands are set to become a former British Overseas Territories, British overseas territory — a treaty to transfer sovereignty from the UK to Mauritius was signed on 22 May 2025, with a provision that the military base at the island would remain under British control for at least 99 years. Located just south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean, Diego Garcia lies east of Tanzania, east-southeast of Somalia, south of the Maldives, southwest of India, west-southwest of Sumatra, northwest of Australia, and northeast of Mauritius#Mauritius_Island, Mauritius Island. Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos–Laccadive Ridge, Chagos-Laccadive Ridge, an underwater mountain range that includes the Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and the other 60 small islands of the Chagos Archi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Socorro, New Mexico
Socorro (, ''Help:Pronunciation respelling key, sə-KOR-oh'') is a city in Socorro County, New Mexico, Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is in the Middle Rio Grande Valley AVA, Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 8,707. It is the county seat of Socorro County. Socorro is located south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque and north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Las Cruces. The instruments used by the LINEAR program are located at Lincoln Laboratory's Experimental Test Site (ETS) on the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) near Socorro, New Mexico. History Founding In June 1598, Juan de Oñate led a group of Spanish settlers through the Jornada del Muerto, an inhospitable patch of desert that ends just south of the present-day city of Socorro. As the Spaniards emerged from the desert, Piro Pueblo, Piro Indians of the pueblo of Teypana gave them food and water. Therefore, the Spaniards renamed this ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Photographic Film
Photographic film is a strip or sheet of transparent film base coated on one side with a gelatin photographic emulsion, emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals. The sizes and other characteristics of the crystals determine the sensitivity, contrast, and image resolution, resolution of the film. Film is typically segmented in ''frames'', that give rise to separate photographs. The emulsion will gradually darken if left exposed to light, but the process is too slow and incomplete to be of any practical use. Instead, a very short exposure (photography), exposure to the image formed by a camera lens is used to produce only a very slight chemical change, proportional to the amount of light absorbed by each crystal. This creates an invisible latent image in the emulsion, which can be chemically photographic processing, developed into a visible photograph. In addition to visible light, all films are sensitive to ultraviolet light, X-rays, gamma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Schmidt Camera
A Schmidt camera, also referred to as the Schmidt telescope, is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. The design was invented by Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. Some notable examples are the Samuel Oschin telescope (formerly Palomar Schmidt), the UK Schmidt Telescope and the ESO Schmidt; these provided the major source of all-sky photographic imaging from 1950 until 2000, when electronic detectors took over. A recent example is the Kepler space telescope exoplanet finder. Other related designs are the Wright camera and Lurie–Houghton telescope. Invention and design The Schmidt camera was invented by Estonian-German optician Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. Its optical components are an easy-to-make spherical primary mirror, and an aspherical correcting lens, known as a Schmidt corrector plate, located at the center of curvature of the primary mirror. The film or other detector is placed inside the camera, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Low-light Level TV
Low light level television (LLLTV) is a type of electronic sensing device, usually a CCD camera sensitive to wavelengths above the normal "visible" (0.4 to 0.7 micrometre) wavelengths, and into the short-wave Infrared - usually to about 1.0 to 1.1 micrometres. This allows viewing of objects in extremely low light levels, where they would not be seen by the naked eye. LLLTVs tend to be more affordable than infrared cameras, which typically cover ranges from 3 to 5 μm (MWIR)or 8 to 12 μm (LWIR) See also *Night vision *Thermographic camera Infrared thermography (IRT), thermal video or thermal imaging, is a process where a Thermographic camera, thermal camera captures and creates an image of an object by using infrared radiation emitted from the object in a process, which are exa ... References {{DEFAULTSORT:Low Light Level Television Infrared imaging Cameras by type ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Telescope
A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption, or Reflection (physics), reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally, it was an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe distant objects – an optical telescope. Nowadays, the word "telescope" is defined as a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors. The first known practical telescopes were refracting telescopes with glass lenses and were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 17th century. They were used for both terrestrial applications and astronomy. The reflecting telescope, which uses mirrors to collect and focus light, was invented within a few decades of the first refracting telescope. In the 20th century, many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Naval Space Surveillance System
The AN/FPS-133 Air Force Space Surveillance System, colloquially known as the Space Fence, was a U.S. government multistatic radar system built to detect orbital objects passing over America. It is a component of the U.S. space surveillance network, and according to the U.S. Navy was able to detect basketball sized () objects at heights up to . The system ceased operation in September 2013. Plans for a new space fence began with sites at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, along with an option for another radar site in Western Australia. It became operational on March 28, 2020. The operation's headquarters were at Dahlgren, Virginia, and radar stations were spread out across the continental United States at roughly the level of the 33rd parallel north. Description There were three transmitter sites in the system: * 216.983 MHz at Lake Kickapoo, Texas () (Master transmitter) * 216.970 MHz at Gila River, Arizona () * 216.990 MHz at Jordan Lake, Alabam ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Naval Space Command
The Naval Space Command (NSC) was a military Command (military formation), command of the United States Navy and former component command of United States Space Command. It was headquartered at Dahlgren, Virginia, and began operations on 1 October 1985. Naval Space Command used space capabilities to support naval forces through the operation of reconnaissance satellites, reconnaissance and communications satellites, as well as representing the Navy's space interests, both within the Navy and within U.S. Space Command. The command was merged into Naval Network and Space Operations Command, itself part of Naval Network Warfare Command, about July 2002. History In the late 1950s the United States Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard Minitrack system used electronic signals emitted by Sputnik and other satellites to characterize their orbits, serving as one of the first methods of ground-based satellite tracking. This system would become commissioned in 1961 as the Naval Spa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electronic Systems Center
The Electronic Systems Center was a product center of Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) headquartered at Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts. Its mission was to develop and acquire command and control, communications, computer, and intelligence systems. ESC consisted of professional teams specializing in engineering, computer science, and business management. The teams supervised the design, development, testing, production, and deployment of command and control systems. Two of ESC's most well-known developments were the Boeing E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), developed in the 1970s, and the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS), developed in the 1980s. The Electronic Systems Center served into five decades as the Air Force's organization for developing and acquiring Command and Control (C2) systems. As of December 2004, ESC managed approximately two hundred programs ranging from secure communications systems to mission planning ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |