REDSTONE ARSENAL, Alabama -- Members of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command demonstrated that communicating with satellites is easier than it seems.
The USASMDC/ARSTRAT's Technical Center conducted a demonstration of the fully integrated Kestrel Eye Ground Station, or KEGS, at the command headquarters February 4.
"What we want to do is raise awareness about Kestrel Eye, the ground station and how they operate," said Mark Ray, Kestrel Eye Ground Station program lead. "We had some good discussions with Soldiers about how Kestrel Eye could be used in real-world operations."
Kestrel Eye is a small, low cost, visible imagery satellite demonstrator that will offer tactical-level Warfighters with rapidly supplied imagery. Kestrel Eye will not be replacing national imagery satellite assets, but will provide a lower resolution image in a quicker turnaround time in tactical support of Warfighters.
The SMDC Technical Center is developing Kestrel Eye as an electro-optical nanosatellite-class imagery satellite that will be capable of producing 1.5-meter resolution imagery. Kestrel Eye's data can be downlinked directly to Warfighters via a data relay network that is also accessible by other Warfighters in theater without any continental United States relay or data filtering.
"The goal of Kestrel Eye is to be able to request an image and get it back as quickly as possible and the Kestrel Eye Ground Station allows that to happen," Ray said. "The same person who requested the imagery can get it back within 10 minutes or at most, 90 minutes for the next orbit of the satellite."
Members of the Tech Center's Concepts Analysis Lab have been working hand in hand with the Kestrel Eye program and were supporting the KEGS demonstration.
"The Concepts Analysis Laboratory assisted the Kestrel Eye program in reviewing the design of the Kestrel Eye Ground Station, as well as reviewing and assisting with the implementation of those designs," said Christian Reyes, CAL computer scientist. "Members of the CAL are constantly providing feedback to the program and to the developers, as well as directly developing components of the ground station that will be used."
To support the future launch of Kestrel Eye, the KEGS demonstration proved the ability to show rapid integration as it performed a live track of NASA's low-earth orbit satellites Aqua, Aura and Terra.
"We were able to track three of NASA's earth-imaging satellites and receive data from them and proved that we can run data through our system," Ray said.
The results were shown during the demonstration, with the results providing confidence that the KEGS will be able to accurately track Kestrel Eye during the upcoming Joint Capability Technology Demonstration. The JCTD is aimed at exploiting mature and maturing technologies and introduces new operational concepts to solve important military problems.
The demonstration was designed to showcase recent advancements in the KEGS and increase awareness and familiarity with the program.
"We were able to demonstrate the ability to track low earth orbit satellites which are more difficult to see than when we will be communicating with Kestrel Eye," Ray said. "We were also able to operate the ground station as we intend it to operate in the future."
Reyes said a key selling point of Kestrel Eye is that the Warfighter, out in the field, can request imagery and receive it without having to rely on larger, more costly and more sensitive resources and technical means.
"This will provide a completely new imagery capability than Warfighters currently have access to," Reyes said. "The ground station will ultimately be deployed at the brigade level, and that organization will be able to quickly receive valuable information in a very timely manner."
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