Cavalier Space Force Station, US Space Force station near Cavalier, North Dakota, United States
Cavalier Space Force Station is a military installation in North Dakota that houses a large radar system for monitoring space and airborne threats. The main facility features a radar building with flat panels pointing north over Hudson Bay, surrounded by open fields with minimal vegetation.
The station was built in 1977 and initially served as part of the Safeguard Program, a Cold War defense system designed to detect nuclear missile threats. Following the end of that program, it transitioned to a space and missile warning role and was officially transferred to the Space Force in 2021.
The station is located in a remote area of North Dakota that is not typically accessible to visitors since it functions as an active military installation. The surrounding landscape of open fields and farmland offers wide sightlines, making the area suitable for uninterrupted radar monitoring operations.
The radar system can detect objects as small as a basketball from thousands of miles away and tracks over 20,000 space objects each day. An underground power plant running on diesel and natural gas ensures the facility maintains operations even during external power failures.
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