Making the announcement at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado, the company said the device could be easily transported for “rapid deployment” and could monitor threats such as foreign launches.
LeoLabs is best known in Australia for its West Australian Space Radar, which was unveiled in 2023. The site, along with others globally, tracks tens of thousands of objects in LEO before its software uses AI to process the millions of measurements collected.
It comes with space companies increasingly concerned with the amount of debris in orbit and governments turning to commercial businesses for off-the-shelf-style surveillance.
The new radar, named Scout, is a “containerised S-band Direct Radiating Array (DRA)” that can be deployed alone or in more extensive networks.
“By integrating next-generation and legacy radars, LeoLabs is creating a resilient, low-latency network for persistent orbital Intelligence,” said the firm.
“As we deploy new radar classes and technologies, LeoLabs continues to expand our capabilities across mission sets and orbital regimes, enhancing our ability to detect, track, and characterise objects and activity in space.”
LeoLabs also has space radars in the Azores, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Argentina, Alaska and Texas, alongside its facility near Collie in WA.
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It also recently announced in December that its Seeker Ultra High-Frequency DRA radar in Arizona was operational.
“Heightened adversarial activity, the advent of mega-constellations, the increasingly frequent pace of launch, and more sophisticated spacecraft manoeuvrability all underscore the need for resilient ground-based monitoring solutions that can adapt to the continuously evolving space environment,” said LeoLabs.
The news comes days after the European Space Agency released a report estimating that there are 1.2 million pieces of space debris larger than 1cm in orbit.
SA-based firm Silentium Defence also manufactures a mobile SDA radar named the ‘Space Observatory-in-a-Box’.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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