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This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 1 November 2010, was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It describes nanosatellite technologies and proposes launching nanosats into orbit with laser Lightcraft propulsion. It also covers a weapon mission selection study and multi-megawatt laser options. The author recommends that the Department of Defense and NASA bring Lightcraft R&D back to the United States and restart the X-50LR flight demonstration program.
“Masse”33 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ /1"91t 91"1"1!111it l!l!il! 811L¥ push broom scanning mode for complete Earth coverage rather than only sampling coverage. The constellation/array implementation is similar to that of the preceding concept (High Resolution Surface Sampling Radiometry section), except that tethers hold a receiving array that must be 2 km long to obtain the 1,200 km instantaneous swath width with a resolution of 100 m. It consists of a 2 km long focal surface with 12,000 printed dipoles, shaped into a focal surface by gravity gradient forces balanced against magnetic forces from a superconducting conductor around its periphery, acting on a piezoelectric, electron beam-shaped, adaptive membrane substrate. The large antenna is formed by a swarm of tiny elements making up the lens of a space-fed array. The antenna is a 4 km x 6 km diameter, sparse, self-cohering array formed from 12,000 picosats weighing 23 grams each, rotating in relative coordinates in a plane around a central orbit point. The picosats are similar to those of the preceding concept (High Resolution Surface Sampling Radiometry section). Their locations are initially selected to lie in a plane, and their spacings are pseudorandom to minimize the sidelobe levels, with each picosat designed to loosely stationkeep inside a box 10 m on a side. The relative positions of these picosat elements changes slowly, and only small and infrequent stationkeeping propulsive maneuvers are needed for constellation maintenance. The effective collecting aperture of the array is the sum of those of the picosats, and in this concept, equal to that of an equivalent 6 m diameter antenna at 2 GHz. However, the coverage spot diameter is set by the total aperture diameter of 4 km x 6 km, and thus is 100 m at 2 GHz from a 4,000 km orbit. Five constellation/arrays would produce 100% global coverage with 5 hour revisit for time critical measurements. The entire constellation weighs 3,000 kg, but that could be reduced in the future to 30 kg if Buckytubes are used to construct the system. ROTATING NANOSAT SWARM DISTRIBUTED RADAR An extremely powerful space-based radar, this concept would allow detection of most air, land, sea, and space targets, as well as many "low observable" targets anywhere, with one or a few constellations in GEO. A large, sparse array antenna using a swarm of nanosats creates a space-based radar system. The constellation/array implementation is similar to that of the preceding rotating swarm concepts, except that it generates and radiates extremely large peak and average powers, and given the generally high angles of viewing can detect and track many air, space, and surface targets from GEO. The constellation is composed of 10,000 nanosats that are self-contained repeater spacecraft weighing about 1 kg each. Each nanosat receives the ground signal, digitizes, delays, and retransmits it, causing it to arrive at the feeds at the same time as a direct ray through the center of the array. The time delay of each nanosat is self computed based on its location in the swarm, as measured by a local DGPS-like navigation signal, to compensate for its deviation from its assigned ideal location. Commands for beam sweep delays are superimposed on the time delays of each nanosat. Each nanosat generates 10 W of average power and 10 kW peak power at UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'1'81l 81'1'Uil,t.k Wlili liUlklC 39
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 77 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.