The SATRACK System: Development and Applications

THE AUTHORS
THOMAS THOMPSON received a B.S.E.E. degree from Lafayette College in
1960 and an M.S.E.E. degree from The Johns Hopkins University in 1968. He
is a member of APL’s Principal Professional Staff in the Strategic Systems
Department. He joined APL’s Space Department in 1960 and served as a group
supervisor, a branch supervisor, and the chief engineer. Mr. Thompson
participated in a wide range of satellite development activities before becoming
the lead system engineer for SATRACK development in 1973. In 1983, he
joined System Planning Corporation, where he led the development of
specialized radar instrumentation before returning to APL in 1992. At APL, he
has led the development of important upgrades to the SATRACK system for
Trident reentry body flight test evaluations, and IR&D activities to demonstrate
new GPS measurement capability for missile intercept evaluations. His e-mail
address is thomas.thompson@jhuapl.edu.
LARRY J. LEVY is the Chief Scientist of APL’s Strategic Systems Department.
He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Iowa State University in
1971. Dr. Levy has worked on applied Kalman filtering for over 30 years. He was
the co-developer of the GPS translator concept in SATRACK (a GPS-based
missile tracking instrumentation system) and was instrumental in developing
the end-to-end methodology for Trident II accuracy evaluation. He teaches
graduate courses in Kalman filtering and system identification at The Johns
Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering and Kalman filtering
seminars for Navtech Seminars. His e-mail address is larry.levy@jhuapl.edu.
EDWIN E. WESTERFIELD attended the University of Maryland where he
received a B.S.E.E. degree in 1952 and an M.S.E.E. degree in 1963. He is a
member of APL’s Principal Professional Staff in the Strategic Systems
Department. He joined APL in 1954 and was involved with development of the
Talos guidance system and led the development of a large telemetry facility. In
1960 he transferred to the Space Department, where he led the development of
a relative navigation system using signals from the Navy Navigation Satellite
System. On initiation of the SATRACK program, he became responsible for the
development of much of the hardware and also served as a group supervisor. He
transferred to the Strategic Systems Department in 1990, where he is Group
Supervisor of the SATRACK/GPS Systems Group. Mr. Westerfield serves as the
Program Manager of the National Missile Defense Precision Missile Tracking
Program and of the GPS Range Applications Joint Program. His e-mail address
is edwin.westerfield@jhuapl.edu.
THE SATRACK SYSTEM
JOHNS HOPKINS APL TECHNICAL DIGEST, VOLUME 19, NUMBER 4 (1998) 447