Article clipped from Olney Enterprise

U.S. Navy surveilliance in Archer CountyBY WILL SADLER, NATALIE DELVILLAR EMMA SCOTT,OLNEY ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITERSAfter receiving a few reports of heavy construction going on nearthe U.S. Naval Space Command Space Surveillance System off FM 2178 some believed the government was revamping the old installation. The station itself tracks objects that pass overhead as small as a basketball. It does not track only detects objects moving over the station in low orbit according to information obtained from FAS.ORG (Federation of American Scientists). After investigating the area and talking with workers at the construction site, all that is going on is regular everyday pipeline work. Neither the installation nor the pipeline construction would affect the Olney Area.Even so at the Headquarters of Dahlgren, Virginia, Naval Space Command began operations Oct. 1, 1983. It operates assigned space systems to provide surveillance and warning and provides spacecraft telemetry and on-orbit engineering support. Also, ASCC is charged with monitoring the space environment and informing owners and operators of the U.S. and allied space systems of potential threats to their assets by continuous liaison with the systems5 operations centers.According to the history the Minitrack System was developed in the late 1950s for the NRL Vanguard Satellite Program used the signals emitted by Sputnik and later satellites to determine their positions and orbits. This pioneering tracking system led to the concept of tracking nonradiating, or noncooperative, satellites by signals reflected off them. Although the operational command is now integrated with the Naval Space Command, the sensor system is still in active use as a major component of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and has become the alternate Space Defense Computational Facility.The U.S. Navy Spasur (Space Surveillance) System is a C.W fence radar consisting of a chain of stations located on an east-west great-circle path across the southern United States and has three transmitter stations (one high-powered in the center of the chain and two low-powered on the ends for gap filling) and six receiving stations are used inSee Surveillance on Page 4US Naval Space Command Space Surveillance SystemPhoto by Will SadlerPipeline construction work in progress on FM 2178.Photos by Will SadlerA
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Olney Enterprise

Olney, Texas, US

Thu, Jun 06, 2019

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AL, USA 18 Jul 2022

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