Lab to build special order satellites in days

[unhappycamper]

AFRL TacSat 2 -- a pathfinder for direct support to the warfighter.


Lab to build special order satellites in days
By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Feb 20, 2009 17:24:20 EST

The Defense Department’s Operationally Responsive Space office at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., is creating a space SWAT team that will field new capabilities in a matter of days rather than the years it often takes to develop and launch space assets.

The lab, called Chileworks in a nod to New Mexico’s famous chile peppers, will receive taskings from combatant commanders through U.S. Strategic Command and be asked to build and launch a new satellite within a week.

The lab is not expected to be fully up to speed until 2015, but limited test projects are already well underway. The ORS office put out a request for information Jan. 22 for a contractor to oversee systems engineering and integration at Chileworks and will award the contract later this year.

Peter Wegner, director of the ORS office, likens Chileworks — officially called the Rapid Response Space Center — to a U-2 reconnaissance wing.

“You can think of the way a U-2 works,” he explained. “We’ve got this U-2 aircraft and we can put a wide variety of different payloads on, and then we’ve got a team of people ... that can pull it into operation very quickly, in a matter of hours, to support ... these emerging needs.”


Rest of article at: http://airforcetimes.com/news/2009/02/af_satellites_space_022009/%2e