Air & Space Forces Magazine has an interesting piece up about the Space Rapid Capabilities Office and their efforts to modernize the Satellite Control Network:

SCN, composed of 19 antennas stationed around the world, from Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean to the village of Oakhanger in southern England to Schriever Space Force Base, Colo., is used to track a satellite’s location, collect its health and status reports, and send signals to control its subsystems such as power supply, antennas and mechanical and thermal control.

But the antennas are old—Hammett noted that they are technically the second-oldest active weapons system in the Pentagon, after the B-52 bomber—and can only maintain contact with one satellite at a time—an increasingly untenable situation given the growth in the number of satellites in orbit.

SCAR will boost SCN with electronically steerable phased array antennas that can connect with multiple satellites in a time, expanding communications capacity ten-fold, according to the SpRCO. The office awarded a $1.4 billion contract to BlueHalo in May 2022, and Hammett told reporters in Orlando that in August 2023, the program completed a “one-meter demo,” clearing the way for full-scale radars to be produced.

It’s easy to overlook the work on the ground required to support the immense transformation happening in low earth orbit but modern constellations are going to require a lot of upgrades in their ground based support.