...the Space Based Space Surveillance Block 10 satellite. This important milestone reflects more than seven years of effort and cooperation between the Space and Missile Systems Center, Air Force Space Command Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command's Joint Functional Component Command for Space, the Boeing Company and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Declaring IOC for the SBSS Block 10 means the system has achieved its initial level of capability and is ready to support USSTRATCOM requirements.

"The SBSS satellite will provide needed capability to the national deep-space space situational awareness in terms of timely revisit of high interest objects and increased capacity to meet current and future warfighter SSA needs," said Robert Davidson, Air Force Space Command's Space Superiority Division chief.

As a taskable dedicated sensor within the nation's Space Surveillance Network, SBSS performs space surveillance operations in support of U.S. Strategic Command. The Block 10 satellite is the only space-based sensor in the network, operating 24-hours a day, 7- days a week collecting metric and Space Object Identification data for man-made orbiting objects without the disruption of weather, time of day and atmosphere that can limit ground-based systems. This improved access to observe orbiting objects significantly enhances the ability to provide timely, critical information so desperately needed to support warfighter decision making. Providing improved detection timeliness assists the Joint Space Operations Center with maintaining an accurate knowledge of orbiting object positions, tracking new objects and debris, and reducing the number of uncorrelated targets currently in the space catalog. "It's an agile sensor so it can be tasked to look at high-interest objects on a more frequent basis," said Davidson.

SBSS Block 10 was launched aboard an Orbital Sciences Minotaur IV rocket from Vandenberg AFB, California, on September 25, 2010. The first signals from the advanced space surveillance satellite were received a short time later at the Satellite Operations Center at Schriever Air Force Base.