FD-CHIRP: First Commercially-Hosted OPIR Sensor

Abstract

This paper describes the history of the first commercially -hosted Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) sensor: the Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload (CHIRP) flight demonstration (FD-CHIRP) launched 21 September 2011 and completed in July 2012. CHIRP investigated staring wide field-of-view (WFOV) missile warning (MW) data over the Western United States and Pacific Ocean. The major CHIRP challenge was the business arrangement among the Air Force, Orbital, the commercial satellite operator and the payload provider ‐ a challenge unique to commercial hosting. Other challenges included payload-to-sate llite electrical, mechanical and thermal interfaces which are more difficult for commercial hosting than dedicated remote sensing missions wherein the host satellite and hos ted sensor are specified and designed together. Two attempts conducted by Hughes Aircraft Company in the mid-1990's and a 2005 Orbital commercially-hosted Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) navigation mission on Galaxy 15 provided lessons assisting CHIRP initiation in 2008. A 1994 Hughes proposal to place a Geostationary Environmental Monitor (GEM) on a Brazilian Telephone Company-purchased Hughes HS-601 Geostationary Earth Orbiting (GEO) satellite failed due to business difficulties among Hughes, t he spacecraft customer, and the Brazilian Meteorological Organization commercially-hosted payload customer. In 1995 Hughes approached NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) based on GEM lessons to place two LaRC tropospheric research payloads in GEO. This led to LaRC's GeoTropSat proposal in 1996 that was not submitted due to a late Hughes decision to withdraw. Orbital applied lessons from these early efforts to lead the successful unsolicited CHIRP proposal. The CHIRP cost of $82.9M is 16.5% of the $500M cited by the Air Force in 2008 for a dedicated demonstratio n, showing the cost savings possible by commercially hosting a remote sensing mission. Nomenclature