According to DOD and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the space domain is becoming increasingly congested, contested, and complex. Consequently, space systems are increasingly vulnerable to a variety of intentional and unintentional threats, such as radio frequency interference (including jamming); laser dazzling and blinding; kinetic intercept vehicles; ground system attacks; an increase in the number of orbiting space objects (including active and inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, and other fragments and debris); and space weather environmental effects. The government’s SSA efforts are designed to mitigate these threats via a variety of space- and ground-based sensors and systems that detect, track, and characterize space objects and space- related events and forecast which assets may be at risk. Recent events, such as the January 2007 Chinese antisatellite weapon test—when China used a missile to destroy one of its old weather satellites—and the February 2009 collision between an operational Iridium commercial communications satellite and a nonfunctioning Russian communications satellite, have created thousands of additional debris objects and called attention to the need for better SSA capabilities. SSA is fundamental to conducting space operations and forms the foundation for accomplishing space control, which DOD defines as operations to ensure freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies, and when directed, denying an adversary freedom of action in space. Top-level guidance for SSA efforts includes the Administration’s 2010 National Space Policy of the United States of America—a Presidential Policy Directive that establishes overarching national policy that governs the conduct of U.S. space activities—and the Department of Defense’s 2006 Space Control Joint Capabilities Document. The National Space Policy states that the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence shall maintain and integrate space surveillance, intelligence, and other information to develop accurate and timely SSA, as well as to improve, develop, and demonstrate, in cooperation with relevant departments and agencies and commercial and foreign entities, the ability to rapidly detect, warn, characterize, and attribute natural and man-made disturbances to space systems of U.S. interest. The National Space Policy assigns the Secretary of Defense the responsibility, with support from the Director of National Intelligence, for the development, acquisition, operation, maintenance, and modernization of SSA capabilities governmentwide. It assigns the Director of National Intelligence the responsibility for providing robust, timely, and effective collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of information on foreign space and supporting information system activities and for integrating all-source intelligence of foreign space capabilities and intentions with space surveillance information to produce enhanced intelligence products that support SSA. The 2006 Space Control Joint Capabilities Document identifies SSA as a key capability needed to enable freedom of action in space, identifies capability gaps in SSA capabilities, and contains overarching SSA requirements for addressing the gaps in the following task areas: Orbital and network information—detect, track, identify, and catalog man-made space objects and provide services including overflight warning, signal/laser deconfliction, and conjunction assessment. Environmental information—monitor, characterize, predict, and report on the space-related environment. Event information—detect, process, and report space events, such as launches, orbital maneuvers, satellite breakups, space object reentries, orbital decay, space object separations, dockings, and changes in baseline status beyond nominal operating parameters; also, characterize, assess, and resolve anomalies/attacks on all space systems. U.S., allied, and coalition space system information—maintain the status and characteristics of U.S., allied, and coalition space forces and assets. Space intelligence information—provide status and characterization of foreign and adversary space-related assets, strategies, tactics, intent, activities, and knowledge. The requirements contained in the Space Control Joint Capabilities Document form the basis for ongoing and planned DOD SSA acquisition efforts. U.S. Strategic Command is responsible for planning and conducting DOD space operations. The Joint Functional Component Command for Space, a component of U.S. Strategic Command, coordinates, plans, integrates, commands, and controls space operations through its Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC). A major function of the JSpOC is to maintain SSA. A multitude of tasks and functions must be performed to meet the broad definition of SSA. For example, according to the Space Posture Review interim report, SSA includes, at a minimum, continual awareness of orbiting objects; real-time search and high-fidelity information; threat detection, identification, and location; predictive intelligence collection and analysis of foreign space capability and intent in a geopolitical context; and a global reporting capability for friendly space systems. The interim report divides SSA into four major functional capabilities: (1) detect, track, and identify—the ability to discover, track, and differentiate among space objects; (2) threat warning and assessment—the ability to predict and differentiate among potential or actual attacks, space weather environment effects, and space system anomalies; (3) intelligence characterization—the ability to determine performance and characteristics of current and future foreign space and counterspace system capabilities, as well as foreign adversary intentions; and (4) data integration—the ability to correlate and integrate multisource data into a single common operational picture and enable dynamic decision making. Consequently, the JSpOC relies on numerous sources of data and information to maintain SSA, including space surveillance sensors; the intelligence community; and academic, commercial, and foreign collaboration. A significant aspect of SSA involves tracking many thousands of man- made space objects that typically travel 9 times the speed of a bullet and reside in a search volume 220,000 times the volume of Earth’s oceans. SSA also involves knowing where each of these objects came from (who owns them), where it is and where it is going, its purpose, and its capabilities. And, if an anomaly occurs, such as satellite communications interference or loss of satellite functionality, ascertaining the reasons why. The JSpOC relies on the space surveillance network (SSN) to detect, track, identify, and catalog space objects. The SSN, primarily operated and maintained by the Air Force, consists of a worldwide network of 29 ground-based radars and optical sensors, data processing capabilities, and supporting communication systems. DOD started to build the SSN subsequent to the former Soviet Union’s launch of its first Sputnik satellite in 1957. Some of the sensor systems built in the 1960s and 1970s have undergone modernization and sustainment efforts and are still operational today. Appendix II discusses the composition of the SSN. The JSpOC uses SSN data to accomplish the following: maintain the space object catalog; analyze new space launches; detect new man-made objects in space, perform conjunction assessments (predict potential collisions between space objects and inform NASA and other government, commercial, and foreign entities if objects may interfere with the orbits of the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and operational satellite platforms); and conduct space object atmospheric reentry assessments (predict when and where a space object will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere, determine who owns the object, prevent a returning space object—which to radar looks like a missile—from triggering a false alarm in missile-attack warning sensors of the United States and other countries, and predict surface impacts of reentering objects). SSN information is also used for developing space intelligence, which, in turn, is used to support SSA operations. The JSpOC also relies on ground- and space-based sensors that make space weather observations to detect and forecast solar storms that may be harmful to space system operations. These sensors are owned, operated, and developed by DOD, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and foreign providers. Examples of space weather observations include bursts of solar energy called solar flares, solar winds, geomagnetic activity associated with solar storms, solar X-ray images and fluctuations, and solar ultraviolet images and fluctuations. These observations are associated with geomagnetic storms, electromagnetic radiation, ionospheric scintillation, high-energy particles, and solar radio bursts that can adversely impact space and ground assets and operations, terrestrial communications, and transmissions between Global Positioning System satellites and ground-based receivers. According to Air Force and NOAA officials, the subject area of space weather is relatively immature, and is comparable to the maturity of terrestrial weather research and prediction capabilities that existed 20 to 30 years ago. SSA mission complexity is also exemplified by the many and varied organizations that are SSA stakeholders (users and providers of SSA information). For example, according to Air Force Space Command and the National Security Space Office (NSSO), 39 organizations across the military, intelligence, and civil government are involved in efforts to develop a new SSA architecture (discussed later in this report). This becomes more complex with the addition of commercial and foreign organizations. Such a diverse array of stakeholders complicates architecture and requirements development, acquisition program oversight, as well as SSA operations. The SSA mission is also becoming more difficult. For example, as shown in figure 1, the number of space objects has been increasing over the past 50 years, resulting from increasing use of space as well as events such as the 2007 Chinese antisatellite test and 2009 Iridium/Cosmos satellite collision, which, according to NASA, together had increased the number of cataloged space objects by more than 60 percent. DOD has significantly increased its investment and planned investment in SSA acquisition efforts in recent years to address growing SSA capability shortfalls. Most efforts designed to meet these shortfalls have struggled with cost, schedule, and performance challenges which are rooted in systemic problems that most space acquisition programs have encountered over the past decade. Consequently, in the past 5 fiscal years, DOD has not delivered significant new SSA capabilities as originally expected. To its credit, the Air Force recently launched a space-based sensor that is expected to appreciably enhance SSA.