Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Exploitation

One of the world’s earliest and most well-known spy satellite programs, the now declassified Corona photo-reconnaissance program, was jointly funded by DARPA and the Central Intelligence Agency.

More than 500,000 pieces of manmade space debris—including spent rocket stages, defunct satellites, and fragments as small as flecks of paint—currently hurtle around the Earth at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. At those speeds, impacts involving even the smallest of those items can damage satellites and spawn chain reactions of collisions, increasing the amount of orbital flotsam and creating “minefields” in space that can remain unpassable for centuries.

Dense constellations of low-earth-orbit (LEO) micro-satellites can provide new intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, which are persistent, survivable and available on-demand for tactical warfighting applications. The Small Satellite Sensors program seeks to explore new sensor concepts that are well-matched to the capabilities achievable in small satellites.

Today, the lowest echelon members of the U.S. military deployed in remote overseas locations are unable to obtain on-demand satellite imagery in a timely and persistent manner for pre-mission planning. This is due to lack of satellite overflight opportunities, inability to receive direct satellite downlinks at the tactical level and information flow restrictions.