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ALTAIR

ALTAIR or Advanced Research Project Agency Long-Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar is a satellite engineered in part by William Uhrich in Kwajalen Atoll, Marshall Islands.

From army.mil

The ARPA Long-Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar (ALTAIR) was developed and built at Roi-Namur in the Reagan Test Site between 1968 and 1970.

ALTAIR is a high-sensitivity, wide-bandwidth, coherent, instrumentation and tracking radar. ALTAIR supports several operating modes, including tracking and signature collection at VHF and UHF. Target resolution in VHF is 37 meters; in UHF, target resolution is 15 meters.

The ALTAIR system provides a large repertoire of narrow- and wide-band waveforms. The high sensitivity and relatively wide beamwidth of the radar make the instrument ideal for viewing dispersed targets. The same characteristics make the radar ideal for tracking space objects out to and beyond synchronous orbit.

ALTAIR can independently track up to 32 targets in both VHF and UHF. Simultaneous track in both frequencies allows realtime ionospheric correction to further refine tracking accuracy.

The ALTAIR Recording System (ARS) records phase and amplitude data, both Right Circular and Left Circular on all in-beam, tracked targets, transferring data to high speed disks at rates up to 56 MBytes/second.

From fas.org

ALTAIR is a high-resolution radar located at Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific that provides precision metric, signature, and imaging for deep-space operations, satellite observations, strategic reentry missions, and multiple-intercept engagement tracking. ALTAIR is a near earth and deep space tracking radar. As one of the three radars composing the Space Surveillance Network, ALTAIR can track one third of the objects in the geosynchronous belt, more than 42,000 tracks per year. The other two radars are the ALCOR (ARPA Lincoln Band Observable Radar) and the TRADEX (Target Resolution and Discrimination Experiment). ALTAIR is unique because it is the only radar in the Space Surveillance Network with an equatorial location.

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Here are some other ALTAIR related links you might find interesting:

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Kwajalein_Atoll_02.html

http://meteor.uwo.ca/~pbrown/altair.pdf

http://www.ies2011.com/IES2011-A159-Heruska.pdf

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4250435