Tag: military space
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Israel successfully places surveillance satellite into orbit
A Shavit 2 launcher takes off from Israel on Monday carrying the Ofeq 16 spy satellite. Credit: Israel Ministry of Defense For the first time in nearly four years, a rocket successfully shot into orbit from Israel on Monday with a military reconnaissance satellite to shore up the country’s space-based capability to surveil Iran and…
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Top secret NRO payload installed on Minotaur rocket for launch from Virginia
The Minotaur 4’s payload shroud is lifted atop the rocket at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Credit: NRO Crews working on Virginia’s Eastern Shore this week raised a top secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office — the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency — atop a solid-fueled Minotaur 4 rocket for liftoff…
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Soyuz rocket launches Russian missile warning satellite
A Soyuz booster and Fregat upper stage successfully carried a missile warning satellite into orbit Friday for the Russian military. Launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far northern Russia, the Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off at 0731 GMT (3:31 a.m. EDT; 10:31 a.m. Moscow time) Friday and arced toward the southeast. A statement from the…
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Live coverage: Atlas 5 launches with X-37B spaceplane
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of an Atlas 5 rocket with on the sixth flight of the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter. United Launch Alliance’s live launch broadcast begins at 8:55 a.m. EDT (1255 GMT) Sunday, May 17. Spaceflight Now members can watch a live…
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Spy satellite launch on Delta 4-Heavy rocket delayed to August
File photo of a Delta 4-Heavy launch in June 2012. Credit: United Launch Alliance The next flight of United Launch Alliance’s triple-barrel Delta 4-Heavy rocket has been delayed from June to late August, military officials said Friday. The heavy-lift rocket will carry a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit, likely targeting a geosynchronous station…
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Payloads revealed for next flight of X-37B military spaceplane
The X-37B spacecraft is encapsulated inside the Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing inside a processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: U.S. Space Force The next flight of the U.S. military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane — scheduled for liftoff May 16 from Cape Canaveral — will carry more experiments into orbit than any…
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Falcon Heavy set for design validation milestone before late 2020 launch
A Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on June 25, 2019. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky The U.S. Space Force expects to complete design validation on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket by July, ahead of the launch of the military’s first high-priority national security mission on the heavy-lifter late this year.…
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ULA begins stacking rocket for next launch of U.S. military spaceplane
An Atlas 5 first stage was raised vertical Thursday inside United Launch Alliance’s Vertical Integration Facility. Credit: United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance technicians raised the first stage of the company’s next Atlas 5 rocket onto a mobile launch platform at Cape Canaveral Thursday, kicking off the launch vehicle’s build-up for a mission scheduled for…
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Iran places military satellite in orbit
Iran’s Qased launcher lifts off Wednesday with the country’s Noor military satellite. Credit: IRIB News Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps — a branch of the country’s armed forces — launched a small military spacecraft into orbit Wednesday, ending a string of rocket failures in the nascent Iranian satellite program. The small military craft, named Noor, flew…
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U.S. officials condemn Russian anti-satellite test
A visualization of space debris in low Earth orbit. Credit: NASA The U.S. military’s chief of space operations rebuked a test of a Russian anti-satellite missile Wednesday, although the test did not apparently target and destroy a spacecraft in orbit. In a statement, U.S. Space Command said it was aware of a test Wednesday of…