Lockheed Martin recently opened a new facility in New Jersey to test hardware, software and firmware that will be used in the Space Fence radar array under construction on the Marshall Islands' Kwajalein Island, between Hawaii and the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean, for the U.S. Air Force.
The Space Fence will be used to detect and track moving objects in outer space to help predict and prevent collisions in space between manned and unmanned craft and comets, asteroids and other phenomena.
“The opening of this test facility marks an exciting milestone for Space Fence,” Bruce Schafhauser, director of Lockheed Martin Space Fence, said at a recent ceremony to celebrate the opening of the New Jersey test site. "We are one step closer to dramatically improving space situational awareness and increasing orbital debris monitoring by tenfold. By using an open-architecture system, Space Fence can adapt to future missions requiring various tracking and coverage approaches.”
The Space Fence array on Kwajalein Island should be up and running by late 2018.
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