Robotic System Tracks Rocket Test
Posted on: Wednesday, 2 June 2004, 06:00 CDT
An airborne robotic sensor system built by U.S. engineers has tracked a rocket during launch and communicated with its computer without human intervention.
The test -- sponsored by Lockheed Martin, the California Space Authority and the U.S. Air Force -- is considered a breakthrough because it might trim the cost of launching rockets by reducing the need for ground-based facilities to track and monitor spacecraft.
The prototype system, called a Range Systems Transformational Laboratory, or RSTL, flew aboard a small research plane 16,000 feet above the southern coast of California and 85 miles downrange from the ascending rocket. It tracked the launch of NASA's Gravity Probe B satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base April 20.
The robot kept its sensors aimed at the booster as it flew over the Pacific Ocean, out of the range of the communications dishes arrayed along the coastline, and others carried by the ships and planes that normally are deployed during a launch.
This is the beginning of the transformation toward truly mobile launch ranges, Ken Griesi, RSTL program manager for Lockheed Martin, told UPI.
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