DoD Launching Experiment For Space-Based Hypersonic Missile Detection - Breaking Defense

The Defense Department’s Space Development Agency (SDA) today plans to launch an experimental payload, developed jointly with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), to study the infrared background created by the Earth.

The experiment, called Prototype Infrared Payload (PIRPL), is foundational for developing DoD capabilities to detect and track dim, fast-flying hypersonic missiles, SDA officials said in a briefing last week.

The PIRPL, a multispectral infrared camera, is one of the numerous payloads headed for the International Space Station (ISS) as part of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus NG-16 commercial cargo ISS resupply mission, contracted by NASA. It also was built by Northrop Grumman, under a $38 million joint SDA-MDA contract.

NG-16 lift-off, on the firm’s own Antares rocket, is slated to take off at 5:56 pm EDT from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, according to a Northrop Grumman press release. (The launch, coincidently, coincides with today’s opening of the Army’s annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.) It is expected to dock with the ISS on Aug. 12.

The primary objective of SDA’s “Tracking Layer” of small satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO, between about 100 and 2,000 kilometers in altitude) is to detect and track fast-moving hypersonic missiles, SDA officials said.