CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A new Global Positioning System satellite is in orbit after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
The on-time 1:21 p.m. liftoff was shown live by cable networks including CNN, reflecting national attention one day after an Orbital Sciences Corp. Antares rocket exploded soon after its liftoff from Virginia's Eastern Shore.
The Air Force said a review of common components between the two rockets revealed no concerns for Wednesday's launch.
While the Antares failed on its fifth try, the Atlas V got off to a successful start to its 50th launch, with a near-perfect track record since 2002.
The rocket was propelled by a Russian-made RD-180 engine that has been highly reliable but also the subject of controversy given strained political relations with Russia. The U.S. relies on the engine to launch many of its national security missions.
The Antares booster was powered by two AJ26 engines built in the 1970s for a Soviet moon exploration program, then refurbished in the U.S.
Wednesday's launch was the fourth this year updating a GPS constellation with 31 active spacecraft orbiting more than 11,000 miles up.
The constellation provides location and timing information to military and civilian users, typically accurate to within several feet and a billionth of a second. They enable navigation services that broadly impact day-to-day activities such as mapping a car's route on your smartphone.
The new spacecraft is the eighth in a series of 12 built by The Boeing Co.
In a statement, Boeing said the GPS IIF has signaled controllers that it is functioning properly. It said signal acquisition came about three-and-a-half hours after launch. By December, the satellite could replace an aging system launched 14 years ago.
The next in the series is tentatively expected to launch from Cape Canaveral in March, and the remainder by early 2016.
No comments:
Post a Comment