TacSat 2

 2006-058A

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AFRL's JWS-D1 (Joint Warfighting Space - Demonstrator 1) or TacSat-2, also called Roadrunner, will use a NGMB (Next Generation Multifunctional Bus) from the cancelled TechSat-21 program, built by MicroSat systems/Littleton.

Launch by Minotaur from WI (transferred from Falcon 1) Spacecraft is box-cylinder + 2 panels, 370 kg. Estimate 1.7m long 1.0m dia 5.5?m span. Launch Nov 2006. Piggyback will be Genesat-1.

Program is to demonstrate stored state to orbit in 1 week (Rapid Call Up Experiment), with autonomous on-orbit commissioning on 1 day, and to demonstrate tactical command and control of the satellite from a mobile location as well as demo a high resolution imager and a system to determine the position of a radio emitting source and image it on the same pass.

A signals intelligence experiment was not immediately activated because of bureaucratic objections from NSA.

The Tacsat 2 bus was later named SN-200 by Sierra Nevada.

Tacsat 2
Date	Time	Event	Orbit
2006 Dec 16	1200:00	Launch by Minotaur	WI MARS LA0B
	T+1:01 St 1 sep
		T+1:18 Skirt sep
		T+2:13 St 2 sep
		T+2:15 St 3 burn
		T+2:23 61-inch Fairing sep
		T+3:29 St 3 burnout
		T+7:41 St 3 sep
	1207	T+7:52 St 4 burn
	1209	T+9:00 St 4 burnout
	1211	T+11:00 St 4 sep
	1220	T+20:58 Genesat 1 sep
2007 Dec 21		end of ops

Payload:

• ECI Enhanced Commercial Imager; 0.51m telescope; High res visible imager (1m) pan/3-color.

• ROPE RoadRunner On board Processing Experiment

• CDL Tactical Common Data Link radio system

• TIE Target indicator experiment

• OOCE Autonomous on-orbit checkout system experiment

• HET BHT-200 Hall Effect thruster

• ISC Inertial Stellar Compass (Draper lab); NASA ST6 mission

• SEI Specific Emitter Identification, Radio emission geolocation experiment (NRL)

• ATE Autonomous Tasking Experiment

• LPT Low Power Transceiver

• IGOR Integrated GPS Occultation Receiver

• ADS AFGL-705 Atmospheric Density Specification (ADS)

  ADS consisted of two complementary experiments to characterize the neutral wind of the upper atmosphere.

  • ACME (Anemometer Cross-track Measurement Experiment). ACME measured the cross-track component of the very rarefied atmosphere at the orbital altitude of 350 km; it required precise pointing knowledge to remove the spacecraft in-track velocity component from its measurement. ACME was made by the University of Texas at Dallas, TX.

  • ADMS (Absolute Density Mass Spectrometer). ADMS measured the atomic mass of the prevailing species in the wind in the range from 1 to 50. ADMS was developed at AFRL, Hanscom AFB, MA.