The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is embarking on an ambitious program that will track the unique visual signatures of individual satellites for quick identification, and whether a friend or a foe of the U.S owns the asset.
DARPA, the government agency that invented the Internet, announced a very innovative program last week. As reported in InformationWeek magazine, the agency wants to reuse the antennas of satellites retired from geostationary earth orbit (GEO)potentially leading the way to salvage hardware from “300 billion worth of retired satellites.”
In these uncertain economic times, millions of Americans are postponing large new purchases as long as they can. After all, why incur the expense of a new car or major appliance when the existing one is still performing well? It doesn’t make economic sense not to get the full lifetime value from expensive products.
In the six months since Intelsat announced that it planned to partner with MDA Corp. to develop a satellite refueling capability, a detailed analysis performed by the two companies shows that this principle works with satellites as well.
