General Atomics to build AFRL satellite for tracking cislunar space

Author: EIS Release Date: Jan 14, 2023

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) will be building an ESPA-Grande class satellite, perform payload integration, and space vehicle test for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Oracle spacecraft programme.

 

General Atomics to build AFRL satellite for tracking cislunar space

 

The San Diego-based company has announced it’s under contract to Advanced Space LLC to contribute to Oracle, which will demonstrate space situational awareness and Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) techniques.

 

Specifically, it will be using technologies capable of detecting and tracking objects in cislunar space.

 

The AFRL Oracle mission will concentrate on the region near the Moon that cannot be viewed optically from the Earth or from satellites in traditional orbits – such as geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) – AFRL often uses the term XGEO.

 

“On-orbit capability to generate greater space situational awareness has wide application as space exploration and efforts to return to the Moon continue to accelerate,” said Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS.

 

“We are proud to be part of Advanced Space’s world- class Oracle mission team, which includes Leidos, a leading space sensor technology provider. We are leveraging our standard GA- 500 satellite bus, which is being developed for the United States Space Force (USSF) under the EO/IR Weather System (EWS) contract, to build an optimized spacecraft integrated with Leidos’ high-performance space optical payload and a customer provided green propulsion system to fulfill Oracle’s two-year mission demonstration lifecycle.”

 

The anticipated launch date for the Oracle spacecraft is late 2025.

 

“Our GA-500 bus is part of an expanding portfolio of configurable, flight-proven ESPA-class satellites offering customers greater versatility to launch missions rapidly and efficiently into space,” said Gregg Burgess, vp of GA-EMS Space Systems.

 

“We look forward to delivering a tailored, rad-hardened Oracle spacecraft capable of operating in the very challenging cislunar space environment. The cislunar region continues to be a strategic area of focus for us to leverage our expertise in satellite design,

manufacturing, and payload development and integration to support new missions operating in the space from the Earth to the Moon.”

 

The US defense company GA-EMS specialises in the research, design, and manufacture of electromagnetic and electric power generation systems.

 

The Oracle spacecraft program was previously called the Cislunar Highway Patrol System, or CHPS.