Globus II (Vardø)

 military, radar station, early warning radar

Vardøs USAF AN/FPS 129 radar a.k.a. ”Globus II”. Before being moved to Vardø, this radar was located at Vandenberg Airbase California and named ”Have Stare”. Globus II has different equipment compared to Have Stare and dissimilar properties and functions.
The radar is the only one of its kind in the world;
- X-band (10 GHz), hi-res, single narrow beam, 200 Kw peak radiated power;
- mechanically steered parabolic reflector center-feed antenna, 27m in diameter housed in a 35m diameter radome mounted on a rotating pedestal
- able to track objects to geosynchronous altitude about 41000 kms.

Globus II is operationally available 24/7, 365 days a year. Tasking:
- monitoring, tracking and cataloguing objects in space.
- strenghtening the ability of the Norwegian Defence Intelligence service to monitor the Norwegian area of military interest

The radar contributes to the US Space Surveillance Network (SSN) and data acquired by Globus II contributes to the orbital database maintained by US Space Cmd. Information from this database is made publicly available by NASA via internet. There will be no real-time data exchange between the radar and the US; requests for tasks, execution and data transmission is performed by Norwegian army and NSA personnel under full Norwegian control.