SpaceX launches GPS satellite
SpaceX last night successfully launched a GPS satellite for the Space Force, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Space Force had originally hired ULA to launch this satellite, but two weeks ago it switched launch provider to SpaceX. Apparently the military wanted this satellite launched now, and for some reason ULA could not do it, even though the Vulcan rocket was supposedly ready for launch.
The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves each completed their second flight.
The 2026 launch race:
11 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX last night successfully launched a GPS satellite for the Space Force, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Space Force had originally hired ULA to launch this satellite, but two weeks ago it switched launch provider to SpaceX. Apparently the military wanted this satellite launched now, and for some reason ULA could not do it, even though the Vulcan rocket was supposedly ready for launch.
The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves each completed their second flight.
The 2026 launch race:
11 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Go to the very end (starting 1:28:00-ish)
–“the satellite is named in honor of astronaut Ellison Onizuka”
–“this is the 9th of 10 total GPS III satellites to be launched for Space-Force, all but one having been previously launched by SpaceX.”
This is easily the most abrupt, last minute switch of launch vehicles I think we’ve ever seen the military do. But I guess we had a lively enough thread about that last time when you covered the announcement.
Richard M: I agree, this swap and launch happened fast. I think however SpaceX has previously launched quicker for the military, from contract to launch maybe even in days. There have been one or two such launches announced and launched in that manner with an unnamed customer and payload. I suspect they were for the Pentagon to demonstrate that quick launch capability.
I remember a time when the customer had to order the launch vehicle far in advance, in order to give the launch company enough time to build it. That was way back … back a decade ago. My, how this newfangled aerospace business has changed our space culture. These 21st century upstart startups brought about so many changes.
wayne,
Very appropriate name for a satellite launched on the 40th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.
Supporting GPS at all was a bigger switch
https://theworld.org/stories/2016/05/27/did-you-know-gps-used-be-controversial-here-s-how-it-survived
From bomber barons to the fighter mafia–many in the military didn’t think it was needed.
Jeff Wright,
I think you mean “many in the USAF didn’t think it was needed.” The USN certainly thought GPS was needed – it was their program after all. The Marines and the Army were fairly easy sells too. But the USAF has never really forgiven the USN for being right about aircraft carriers vs. strategic bombers back when the USAF was first a thing and has tended to reflexively oppose any USN initiative since. As the late Gen. LeMay once famously said, “Gentlemen, the Soviet Union is our opponent. Our enemy is the US Navy.”
Now, of course, we are at a point where GPS has been the USAF’s largest force-multiplier in its history over a span of roughly four decades and all of the blue-suited ignorami who opposed it are long-gone. They’ve been replaced by new generations of blue-suited ignorami who criminally neglected space and are still scrupling to build new instant-antique combat aircraft that require human pilotage. The USAF really is the dumbest service branch. So it goes.