Image curtesy of Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing Company.
The U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command is defining a missile warning and tracking architecture driven by resiliency and speed, where schedule is paramount. These are all features of the next-generation missile tracking system, Missile Track Custody, or MTC.
MTC is key to detecting advanced threats from medium Earth orbit, or MEO, in the current missile warning and defense architecture.
With advanced threats looming, Millennium Space Systems is meeting all MTC milestones for a resilient missile tracking capability, providing six satellites for Epoch 1. And they’re moving fast. The company achieved MTC space vehicle Critical Design Review less than a year after authorization to proceed. They are now full steam ahead on the production of six space vehicles and getting into integration and test.
To move this fast, the team took advantage of the company’s decades of investments in their flight-proven ALTAIR bus heritage, furthering the program’s schedule and reducing risk through design re-use in hardware and software. The MTC active production line is enabling savings in cost, schedule and non-recurring engineering, while maintaining the opportunity for future tech refresh and insertion.
The company is also taking lessons learned from their missile warning satellite in geosynchronous orbit, Wide Field of View, or WFOV. WFOV is contributing to operations in the Pacific and is pathfinding how to achieve ITW/AA certification of new sensors and their data. With WFOV, the missile warning community is getting an early look and lessons learned about how to rapidly bring future LEO and MEO systems online.
With programs like MTC, Millennium Space Systems is redefining what it means to be an operational prime – rapidly delivering operational small sat constellations on rapid timelines. The company is agile, flexible and affordable, delivering critical national security space constellation missions across orbits. And their rich heritage of LEO operational systems enables future proliferation in LEO and MEO to support the necessary layered missile warning and tracking architecture.
MTC is just one element of Millennium’s and Boeing’s approach to supporting a robust national security space architecture, delivering resilient capabilities across all orbits and segments of national security space.
