Troubled space-based infrared satellite program finally gets off the ground.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* SBIRS-High and SBIRS-Low.

At one time the two missile defense satellite systems were notorious examples of over budget, technologically challenged military space programs.

SBIRS--space-based infrared systems--was conceived in the early 1990s as the next-generation of spacecraft that could not only warn when intercontinental or theater ballistic rockets were being launched, but track them accurately enough to possibly shoot them down with a missile defense system.

On May 7, the Air Force successfully sent to geosynchronous orbit GEO-1, the first SBIRS satellite. It was a long, tortuous road, lasting some 15 years with a price tag that will come to $10.4 billion--a huge increase from its original estimate of $4.1 billion. Government auditors laid the blame on poor contractor oversight software development problems and difficulties in developing the new technology.

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Now that the spacecraft is aloft after a nine-year delay, Air Force officials are eager to talk about the future--rather than the past--of the program formerly known as SBIRS-High.

"Certainly SBIRS has had its share of challenges through the years. [But] we have overcome the development issues," Brig. Gen. (sel.) Roger W. Teague, the Air Force's infrared space systems director, told reporters prior to the launch at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Both the SBIRS-High and SBIRS-Low programs were conceived almost two decades ago to replace the Air Force's fleet of Defense Support Program satellites. The DSP spacecraft were designed to detect the launch of a missile using infrared sensors to pick up the engine's heat signature.

They were only designed to warn authorities that a missile was launched. To actually stop one from reaching its target--a long-time goal of the Missile Defense Agency--would require an interceptor missile. That would require more precise tracking from the launch pad to the moment of interception. Ground-based radars can do that up to a certain point, but only if they are in the right locations. To get around the fact that some countries don't want U.S. operated radars on their soil, a spaced-based system was proposed.

SBIRS-High, with up to four satellites in geosynchronous orbit some 24,000 miles above the Earth, would monitor the planet and pick up a heat signature as soon as a rocket fired up its engines. SBIRS-Low, placed in low-Earth elliptical orbits, would not only pick up the missile launch, but track the rocket...