Project Space Track
Project Space Track was started in 1957 at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Laurence G. Hanscom Field, now Hanscom Air Force Base, in Bedford, Massachusetts shortly after the launch of Sputnik I. Observations were obtained from some 150 sensors worldwide by 1960 and regular orbital predictions were issued to the sensors and interested parties.
An Electronic Support System Program Office, 496L, had been established in February 1959, with the program office at Waltham, Massachusetts under the direction of Col Victor A. Cherbak, Jr. By late 1959, the SPO had received additional responsibilities under the DoD Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to develop techniques and equipment for military surveillance of satellites [1].
In late 1960, USAF Vice Chief of Staff General Curtis E. LeMay decided that the research and development system was ready to become operational.
[5]: 8 Eleven officers and one Senior Master Sergeant were selected to be the initial cadre of what became the 1st Aerospace Surveillance and Control Squadron.
On 1 July 1961, the new squadron became operational[6] under the USAF Air Defense Command at Ent AFB, Colorado Springs, part of NORAD's Space Detection and Tracking System (SPADATS).
Two USAF radars, one on Shemya Island in the Aleutians and the other at Diyarbakır, Turkey, had been built to observe Soviet missile launches and became valuable for satellite tracking as well.
Observations were received from the Royal Canadian Air Force research radar at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The Goldstone facility of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was exceptionally helpful with radio observations of Soviet space probes.
For example, individuals on ships, planes, and islands in the Caribbean reported sightings of the decay of satellite 1957 β,[11] although one aircraft was able to provide a detailed observation because the navigator happened to be completing a celestial fix at the exact time[11]: 24 Some sites could record the Doppler shift of satellite transmission or, in a few cases, the Doppler shift from their own transmissions reflected from the orbiting object.
SAO cameras were at Woomera, Australia; Jupiter, Florida; Organ Pass, New Mexico; Olifantsfontein, Union of South Africa; Cadiz, Spain; Mitaka, Japan; Nani Tal, India; Arequipa, Peru; Shiraz, Iran; Curaҫao, Netherlands West Indies; Villa Dolores, Argentina; and Haleakala, Maui, Hawaii.
Major programming of the new computers was done by the Aeronutronic Division of the Ford Motor Company, Newport Beach CA.
Special versions of the look angles were tailored for specific sites, such as the Army and Navy sensor development projects.
[13] In October 1960, George Westrum presented a short college-level course in Celestial Mechanics for those NSSCC personnel who wished to participate[14] By international agreement under the International Astronomical Union, the satellites and space probes were initially named with Greek letters, following the system for naming stars in constellations.
Thereafter, launches were numbered, starting with 1963-1 with the payload normally being 1963-1A, etc... As soon as a new satellite or space probe was launched, Space Track alerted the primary sensors and processed observations as they came in, issuing a preliminary tracking bulletin promptly and updating it after about 24 hours when additional observations from around the world had been obtained.
Routine bulletins continued to be issued regularly as needed to keep up with the changing orbits, some of which decayed fairly rapidly in the atmosphere.
Lockheed Corporation, the development contractor, won their bonus payment because the telemetry showed the satellite achieved orbit, but it was never seen again, despite massive Space Track and other efforts to find it.
The 6594th had a global network of tracking stations (including Alaska, Hawaii, Seychelles, Guam, and the UK), used for command and on-orbit control of the satellites.
Space Track acted as liaison between the 6594th and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to use their Baker-Nunn camera at Cadiz, Spain, to photograph the light.
[5]: 8 Discoverer XIX (1960 Tau) had a payload called MIDAS, the developmental version of what later became the Defense Support Program.
This led to a surreptitious midnight data transfer in central Concord, Massachusetts between Dr. Gordon Pettingill of Millstone Hill and Lt Cotter, as there was no secure teletypewriter or telephone available.
[5]: 8 Perhaps causing inadvertent fireworks in celebration of the activation of the 1st Aerospace Surveillance and Control Squadron, the Ablestar stage for the Navy's Transit 4A satellite, 1961 Omicron, which was launched on 29 June 1961, exploded about 77 minutes after attaining orbit, at 0608Z.
Lawrence W. Cuthbert, 1st Lt Algimantas Šimoliūnas, and Ed Casey achieved a landmark in satellite tracking, plotting observations by hand and identifying orbits for 296 of the fragments.
The resulting program was called "Breakup, Lost and Decay" and, along with subsequent improvements, it has found thousands of the objects in the Space Satellite Catalog.
Eventually, Roy Norris and Lt Cotter inveigled the IBM 610 into cutting paper tapes for the satellite bulletins, so that the airmen in the communication department would not have to type all the data by hand.
[4]: 193 There was some limited secure communication: One method valid for sending classified information was a pair of one-time pads.
The scrambled version could then be transmitted by teletypewriter or telephone to the recipient who, using his matching set of one-time pads, could reverse the process and read the secure message.
The tape served to garble each letter typed, which could then be decrypted by a reverse procedure at the other end of the teletypewriter line.
Dr. Wahl presented detailed descriptions of Space Track activity at the first two International Symposia on Rockets and Astronautics in Tokyo, 1959 and 1960.
[27]) Another very important group was the employees of Wolf R&D Corporation (Concord, Massachusetts), which did programming and had the contract for operating computers at the NSSCC, including the IBM 7090 mainframe.
Except as noted, all documents referenced are in the archives of the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
