Tag: military space
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NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites
The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world. “You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019. The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to…
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NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites
The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world. “You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019. The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to…
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As North Korean troops march toward Ukraine, does a Russian quid pro quo reach space?
Earlier this week, North Korea apparently completed a successful test of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, lofting it nearly 4,800 miles into space before the projectile fell back to Earth. This solid-fueled, multi-stage missile, named the Hwasong-19, is a new tool in North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal of weapons. It has enough range—perhaps as…
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While ULA studies Vulcan booster anomaly, it’s also investigating fairing issues
A little more than a year ago, a snippet of video that wasn’t supposed to go public made its way onto United Launch Alliance’s live broadcast of an Atlas V rocket launch carrying three classified surveillance satellites for the US Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. On these types of secretive national security missions,…
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After nozzle failure, Space Force is “assessing” impacts to Vulcan schedule
United Launch Alliance has started assembling its next Vulcan rocket—the first destined to launch a US military payload—as the Space Force prepares to certify it to loft the Pentagon’s most precious national security satellites. Space Force officials expect to approve ULA’s Vulcan rocket for military missions without requiring another test flight, despite an unusual problem…
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SpaceX prevails over ULA, wins military launch contracts worth $733 million
The US Space Force’s Space Systems Command announced Friday it has ordered nine launches from SpaceX in the first batch of dozens of missions the military will buy in a new phase of competition for lucrative national security launch contracts. The nine launches are divided into two fixed-price “task orders” that Space Systems Command opened…
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ULA is examining debris recovered from Vulcan rocket’s shattered booster nozzle
When the exhaust nozzle on one of the Vulcan rocket’s strap-on boosters failed shortly after liftoff earlier this month, it scattered debris across the beachfront landscape just east of the launch pad on Florida’s Space Coast. United Launch Alliance, the company that builds and launches the Vulcan rocket, is investigating the cause of the booster…
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In a rare disclosure, the Pentagon provides an update on the X-37B spaceplane
After more than nine months in an unusual, highly elliptical orbit, the US military’s X-37B spaceplane will soon begin dipping its wings into Earth’s atmosphere to lower its altitude before eventually coming back to Earth for a runway landing, the Space Force said Thursday. The aerobraking maneuvers will use a series of passes through the…
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ULA’s second Vulcan rocket lost part of its booster and kept going
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, under contract for dozens of flights for the US military and Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network, lifted off from Florida on its second test flight Friday, suffered an anomaly with one of its strap-on boosters, and still achieved a successful mission, the company said in a statement. This test flight, known…
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ULA hasn’t given up on developing a long-lived cryogenic space tug
The second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, planned for Friday morning, has a primary goal of validating the launcher’s reliability for delivering critical US military satellites to orbit. Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters Wednesday that he is “supremely confident” the Vulcan rocket will succeed in accomplishing that objective. The Vulcan’s second…