A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a number of small satellites for the company’s Transporter-10 project launched on March 4 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.
Such birds included Arcfield-owned Orion Space Solutions’ cube satellite for the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command’s (SSC) ElectroOptical/Infrared (EO/IR) Weather Systems (EWS) technical demonstration, two radio frequency satellites by France’s Unseenlabs for maritime domain awareness, and three ICEYE commercial synthetic aperture radar satellites (Defense Daily, March 4).
The one-year EWS cubesat tech demo is to “prove out emerging space-based EO/IR radiometric imaging technology, using a smaller sensor, to provide timely weather imagery data from low Earth orbit (LEO),” SSC said in a March 4 statement.
Lt. Col. Joe Maguadog, EWS materiel leader and program manager at SSC, said in the statement that the EWS tech demo is part of the command’s “continued commitment to working with non-traditional partners to broaden the competitive industrial base while fostering potential groundbreaking solutions.”
“If successful, this will provide an innovative option to deliver SpaceBased Environmental Monitoring data that we are eager to evaluate and is critical to enabling our forces deployed around the world to plan and execute in-theater joint operations,” he said. “This demonstration will inform our transition toward a more affordable, scalable, and resilient EO/IR weather constellation.”
EWS production satellites are to replace four Lockheed Martin [LMT] Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites and provide military forces with global terrestrial cloud forecasts and theater weather imagery data.
DMSP launches began in 1962, and Space Force has been expecting to retire the satellites by 2025.
On Jan. 3 last year, Space Force launched the first EWS technical demonstration cube satellite by Colorado’s Orion Space Solutions aboard the SpaceX Transporter-6 mission from Cape Canaveral (Defense Daily, Jan. 3, 2023). Orion was formerly Atmospheric & Space Technology Research Asssociates (ASTRA).
The Jan. 3, 2023 launch of the Orion Space Solutions’ (OSS) EWS cube satellite fulfilled the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act “mandate to launch a weather EO/IR pathfinder prototype by FY23.”
The Transporter-6 EWS cubesat by Orion “experienced an on-orbit separation anomaly [in] January 2023,” SSC said on March 4. “The United States Space Force, working closely with OSS, were able to award a new contract in less than 30 days, and developed another satellite in just 10 months.”