{"id":58329,"date":"2021-01-08T01:14:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T17:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/us-space-force-espa-flight-system-to-demonstrate-independent-launch-of-up-to-18-satellites-from-nasa-landsat-9\/"},"modified":"2021-01-08T01:14:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T17:14:32","slug":"us-space-force-espa-flight-system-to-demonstrate-independent-launch-of-up-to-18-satellites-from-nasa-landsat-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/us-space-force-espa-flight-system-to-demonstrate-independent-launch-of-up-to-18-satellites-from-nasa-landsat-9\/","title":{"rendered":"US Space Force ESPA Flight System to Demonstrate Independent Launch of up to 18 Satellites from NASA Landsat-9"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

The U.S. Space Force<\/strong>-developed Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) Flight System (EFS) is to demonstrate the launch of up to 18 multi-mission national security and civil satellites from NASA<\/strong>\u2018s Landsat-9 Earth Observation (EO) satellite. Landsat-9 is slated to launch from the United Launch Alliance<\/strong> (ULA) Atlas V 401 rocket this September at Vandenberg AFB, California.<\/p>\n

The Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) said on Jan. 4 that the Landsat-9 EFS had completed its third and final design review \u2013 Design Status Review 3 \u2013 on Dec. 15 and \u201cwas deemed ready to proceed to the final stages of integration.\u201d Topics addressed included range safety and a \u201cDo No Harm\u201d assessment of EFS\u2019 effect on the Landsat-9 anchor satellite.<\/p>\n

Col. Robert Bongiovi, director of SMC\u2019s launch enterprise, said in a statement that the Space Force \u201cis utilizing our Mission Manifest Office\u2019s [MMO] flexibility and efficiency to help our NASA partner make seamless manifest changes to a previously-planned mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis effort underscores MMO\u2019s ability to understand its customer and mission partner\u2019s programs and provide late-stage solutions for evolving capability needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

SMC said that the MMO \u201coriginally designed the EFS to fly only mass simulators as a proof of concept, but has advanced the mission profile to reflect the demand for on-orbit capability.\u201d<\/p>\n

EFS is a joint effort between NASA\u2019s Goddard Spaceflight Center (GSFC) and SMC\u2019s MMO, which has funded the effort.<\/p>\n

Col. Brad Walker, chief of the National Security Space Launch Procurement Division at SMC, said that EFS \u201chighlights the Space Force\u2019s commitment to innovative mission manifest solutions that deliver critical capabilities to support the warfighter and advance science and technology resources for NASA.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next major milestone for EFS is the integration and encapsulation of the Landsat-9 satellite, per SMC.<\/p>\n

Orbital ATK<\/strong>, now part of Northrop Grumman<\/strong>, received a $130 million contract award for Landsat-9 in October 2016. Orbital ATK built three other Landsat satellites, including Landsat-8, which was launched in 2013.<\/p>\n

The multi-satellite launch capability of EFS has tripled since June, 2019 when NASA said that EFS was to have the capability of integrating and delivering to orbit up to six secondary payloads on an adapter ring.<\/p>\n

This was originally published by our sister publication Defense Daily. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Space Force-developed Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter (ESPA) Flight System (EFS) is to demonstrate the launch of up to 18 multi-mission national security and civil satellites from NASA\u2018s Landsat-9 Earth Observation (EO) satellite. Landsat-9 is slated to launch from the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 rocket this September at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}