Browse Resources by Year

2013 – U.S. Space Surveillance Network

Space situational awareness (SSA) is an important national security mission with strong dual-use applications. SSA systems are dedicated to tracking and characterizing every object in Earth’s orbit, making sure objects do not come close enough to each other to pose a risk of collision. They do this by scanning the sky with optical and radar-based sensors, tracking the positions and courses of orbital objects, and predicting their future positions. Most SSA information is collected from ground-based systems—there are only a few satellites that contribute data to this function.

2013 – U.S.: SBSS

The U.S. Space Based Surveillance System (SBSS) satellite, launched in 2010, uses an optical sensor to detect objects in space as it orbits around Earth. It has an expected lifespan of 5.5 years and was designed as a pathfinder for a proposed series of similar satellites.

2013 – Canada: Sapphire

The ability to minimize false detections of missile launches is a feature of Canada’s Sapphire spacecraft, launched in February 2013. The C$## million (US$## million) spacecraft, which features a unique orbit that positions it to track light reflected off of objects in space, offers space surveillance data to both Canada and the United States. Canada’s Sapphire satellite began contributing data on orbiting space objects to the Space Surveillance Network (SSN) system in January 2014.

2013 – Brazilian Spaceports

In 2003, Brazil made an agreement with the government of Ukraine to bring a modernized version of the Soviet-era Cyclone rocket to its Alcântara Launch Center. This would couple the proven reliability of the Ukrainian launch vehicle with the advantageous equatorial location of Alcântara to offer highly competitive prices to commercial clients.

2013 – Chinese Spaceports

China’s new spaceport is the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, located on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. Building the spaceport on the island offers two advantages over China’s current spaceports. As it is located on the coast, China can transport rocket stages to the site via ship and eliminate the size restrictions imposed by the need to pass through railway tunnels and bridges.

2013 – Russian Spaceports

Baikonur Cosmodrome was Russia’s first spaceport, beginning operations in 1957. It is also the largest spaceport in the world in terms of area, and it is the world’s busiest spaceport in terms of number of orbital launches. It is located in what is now the independent country of Kazakhstan, which until 1991 was a Soviet republic.

2013 – U.S. Spaceports

Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) occupy neighboring sites in the state of Florida, and are responsible for the bulk of U.S. launch activity. KSC is the only U.S. spaceport that currently supports crewed orbital spaceflight and historically has been the launch site for almost every crewed U.S. spaceflight. With the end of the Space Shuttle program, KSC and CCAFS were left with an impressive assortment of NASA infrastructure that was now in search of a purpose.

2013 – Spaceports Overview

Spaceports are the facilities where launch vehicles and their payloads are prepared and subsequently launched. Spaceports vary widely in scale. They range from the relatively austere Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, which typically conducts only one launch every year or two from its one pad, to a sprawling facility such as Baikonur, which covers thousands of square kilometers and conducts about one-third of all global launches per year, lifting off from more operational launch pads than are found in any other spaceport.

2013 – Satellite Orbits

There were 1,165 active satellites in orbit at the end of 2013, all performing various missions depending on their configuration and orbit. Of all active satellites, 437 (approximately 38% of the total) were in geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO), an orbit 35,790 kilometers (22,240 miles) above the Equator, which allows satellites to circle the Earth exactly once per day, thus appearing to be fixed above a single point on the Earth’s surface, which is valuable in communications applications.

2013 – Satellite Overview

In 2013, 193 satellites were successfully launched on behalf of 29 different countries. Of these, 101 were “microsatellites,” with a mass of less than 91 kilograms (200 pounds). These satellites often carry scientific payloads or serve as demonstrations of new technologies. They usually operate in LEO, have a short life cycle, and are launched together with a larger primary payload. In most cases, three to six microsatellites piggyback on the primary payload, although one Minotaur launch in November 2013 carried 29 such spacecraft, and a Dnepr launch two days later deployed 32 more.