After waiting for cloudy weather to clear, the U.S. Space Force launched 2 satellites from an Atlas 5 rocket on Friday to test ballistic missile tracking and early warning technology. It also deployed a spacecraft capable of carrying an unknown number classified payloads.
The $1.1 billion USSF-12 mission, which was already running late due to stormy weather, got off to an explosive start at 7:15 PM EDT. Its United Launch Alliance rocket roared to life with 2.3 Million pounds of thrust from its first engine and four strap-on boosters.
The 196-foot tall rocket, trailing a jet of flaming exhaust, quickly climbed from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station pad 41. It then knifed through low clouds before disappearing as it flew east over the Atlantic Ocean.
Eleven minutes later the Aerojet Rocketdyne engine that powers the rocket's secondstage completed the first firing of three intended firings to place the satellites in a circular orbit 22300 miles above the Equator. It was expected that the trip would take six hours. Saturday saw the satellites' deployment from Centaur's second stage.
At such geosynchronous altitudes, satellites take 24 hours for one orbit to complete and rotate in lockstep. This allows continuous hemispheric views as well as the use of stationary ground antennas to relay commands and data.
Wide Field of View Testbed Satellite (WFOV) features an L3Harris infrared sensor that was developed by L3Harris. It will be evaluated for its ability to detect and track ballistic missiles as well as more maneuverable hypersonic weaponry.
The second satellite, USSF-12 Ring is a type of space truck. It has six ports that can be used to house instruments, sensors, or small deployable satellites. It was not clear what might be on board for the USSF-12 mission.
Col. Brian Denaro, Space Systems Command, stated that the WFOV satellite's primary mission was to launch a missile warning and tracker mission. "The USSF-12 mission is an important first step in this priority mission area."
WFOV is not designed to be an operational early warning satellite. It will instead test the new sensor system, and the techniques for processing the massive amounts of data it generates to "inform" the designers of future satellite systems.
During a pre-launch briefing, Denaro stated that "the threat is certainly evolving in an unprecedented fast pace than we haven’t seen before." "We are looking at targets and missiles that are much more maneuverable in the hypersonic domain. They're also dimmer and harder to see."
Denaro said, "And that's requiring us to have a new approach in how we detect and track all these missiles during their flight."
Space Force is currently developing Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared -- OPIR -- satellites which will eventually replace the Space-Based Infrared System (or SBIRS) early warning satellites.
Lockheed Martin has a contract worth $4.9 billion to build three OPIR Geosynchronous Satellites. Northrop Grumman, on the other hand, is responsible for two lower-altitude polar satellites. This contract costs $2.4 billion.
