US sensor hosted on Japan QZS-7 boosts GEO space surveillance over Indo-Pacific

The U.S. Space Force launched a Space Domain Awareness hosted payload on Japan’s QZS-7 navigation satellite, providing near-real-time GEO tracking data to the Space Surveillance Network. The novelty is the bilateral “hosted payload” approach—placing U.S. national-security sensors on allied navigation satellites—to expand coverage and resilience for monitoring contested geosynchronous orbit over the Indo-Pacific.