US, UK, Australia to Provide Space-Based Object Tracking Under 22-Year DARC Partnership

The U.S., UK and Australian governments are partnering for a new initiative to provide resilient space-based radar capabilities.

According to John Plumb, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for space policy, the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability program will allow the countries to track, identify and characterize space objects and support space domain awareness and responsible space operations. DARC will provide higher sensitivity, better accuracy, increased capabilities and enhanced tracking than those provided by geostationary Earth orbit satellites.

DARC is expected to work regardless of weather conditions and time and will be used for services that rely on satellites and space-based communications.

The DARC memorandum of understanding was signed in September and the program will last for 22 years, the U.S. Space Force said.

The trilateral agreement builds on the United States’ series of experimentations and programs for deep space technologies.

In November, NASA achieved a milestone under its Deep Space Optical Communications demonstrator project when it sent and received data from nearly 10 million miles away. Specifically, scientists sent a near-infrared laser from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Optical Communications Telescope Lab to the Psyche spacecraft, where the DSOC payload was installed. DSOC was able to redirect the laser back to Earth.