Galileo to image objects in geosynchronous orbit faster
Military satellites are critical sources of communications and data for today's operations environments. Through DARPA's Phoenix program, usable antennas or solar arrays from retired satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO 36,000 kilometers above earth) could be removed and potentially repurposed as components for new satellites to provide vital mission support. However, identifying cooperating satellites from which to harvest an array is a difficult and lengthy task using current ground-based satellite imaging techniques. By introducing precise fiber optic controls to ground-based telescopes, this challenge may be overcome. DARPA's Galileo program seeks to bridge the precision fiber optic controls and long-baseline astronomical interferometry technical communities to enable imaging of objects in GEO faster than is possible today.