Nolan’s Notes: Finding Your Sweet Spot
Standard of Excellence: Delivering Excellence—A Daily Goal
Knocking Down the Bone Pile: Tin Whisker Mitigation in Aerospace Applications, Part 3
Northrop Grumman Advances the Frontier of Sensing Technology for Space Domain Awareness
June 1, 2023 | Northrop GrummanEstimated reading time: 1 minute
Northrop Grumman Corporation continues to advance the frontiers of sensing technology, successfully completing the Critical Design Review (CDR) and software demonstration for the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF) Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability Program (DARC).
Key milestones completed within 12 months of contract award include:
- Preliminary Design Review
- Critical Design Review
- Initial software demonstration
- Northrop Grumman Advances the Frontier of Sensing Technology for Space Domain Awareness
- Artist Rendering (Credit: Northrop Grumman)
Expert:
“DARC will be the first to provide an all-weather, at all times capability in support of the space domain awareness mission that’s critical to national and global security,” said Pablo Pezzimenti, vice president, integrated national systems, Northrop Grumman. “The successful critical design review is demonstration of our ability to develop a complex, advanced system with agility and speed.”
Details:
Following the completion of CDR, the program now turns its focus to the Factory Acceptance Testing of key subsystems starting later this year.
Current ground-based optical systems only operate at night and are impacted by weather conditions. DARC will deliver an all-weather, 24/7 capability to monitor the rapidly evolving geosynchronous orbital environment – providing the nation with enhanced space domain awareness. DARC will augment the military’s space surveillance network as an additional sensor to monitor deep space objects, eventually providing full global coverage.
Share on:
Suggested Items
Digital Twin Concept in Copper Electroplating Process Performance
07/11/2025 | Aga Franczak, Robrecht Belis, Elsyca N.V.PCB manufacturing involves transforming a design into a physical board while meeting specific requirements. Understanding these design specifications is crucial, as they directly impact the PCB's fabrication process, performance, and yield rate. One key design specification is copper thieving—the addition of “dummy” pads across the surface that are plated along with the features designed on the outer layers. The purpose of the process is to provide a uniform distribution of copper across the outer layers to make the plating current density and plating in the holes more uniform.
Meet the Author Podcast: Martyn Gaudion Unpacks the Secrets of High-Speed PCB Design
07/10/2025 | I-Connect007In this special Meet the Author episode of the On the Line with… podcast, Nolan Johnson sits down with Martyn Gaudion, signal integrity expert, managing director of Polar Instruments, and three-time author in I-Connect007’s popular The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to... series.
Showing Some Constraint: Design007 Magazine July 2025
07/10/2025 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamA robust design constraint strategy balances dozens of electrical and manufacturing trade-offs. This month, we focus on design constraints—the requirements, challenges, and best practices for setting up the right constraint strategy.
The Shaughnessy Report: Showing Some Constraint
07/14/2025 | Andy Shaughnessy -- Column: The Shaughnessy ReportWhen we first decided to cover strategies for setting PCB design constraints, one designer we spoke with said, “They’re not really constraints; they’re more like guardrails that prevent your design from going off a cliff.”
Elementary, Mr. Watson: Rein in Your Design Constraints
07/10/2025 | John Watson -- Column: Elementary, Mr. WatsonI remember the long hours spent at the light table, carefully laying down black tape to shape each trace, cutting and aligning pads with surgical precision on sheets of Mylar. I often went home with nicks on my fingers from the X-Acto knives and bits of tape all over me. It was as much an art form as it was an engineering task—tactile and methodical, requiring the patience of a sculptor. A lot has changed in PCB design over the years.