Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing company, was awarded an Other Transaction Agreement with the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command to deliver an additional plane of six Missile Track Custody, or MTC, satellites in support of its Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking Medium Earth Orbit Epoch 1 program.
Millennium Space Systems is now on contract to deliver two planes, or 12 MTC satellites, plus their associated ground system and mission operations. “MTC is critical to our nation’s resilient missile warning, tracking and defense architecture, and a second plane gets us that much closer to global coverage,” said Michelle Parker, vice president, Boeing Space Mission Systems. “Our ability to deliver is enabled by our bus and payload designs, as well as our achievement of critical milestones on rapid timelines.”
The Boeing-provided electro-optical infrared payload has advanced sensor technology for high-resolution tracking and custody capability from MEO. The payload provides high-resolution tracking and advanced onboard processing for real-time data analysis at the leading edge of detection, reducing the time between threat detection and response.
Millennium Space Systems also completed MTC’s ground system critical design review earlier in the year.
“Small satellite proliferation has a fundamentally different ground concept than traditional systems,” said Lindsay Dewald, MTC program manager, Millennium Space Systems. “What we did was architect an automated mission operations approach with real-time and pre-planned tasking.”
The robust ground system will integrate seamlessly with the existing infrastructure. When the mission runs, the mission-unique software automates the work, allowing operators to spend their time on more important value-add tasks.
