The 45th Space Wing put the X37-B back into play on Sunday. A flawless launch (excluding weather) marked the beginning of yet another undetermined period of orbit for this spectacular craft. Most outlets are talking about the same thing, an energy beam experiment which is onboard this mission that is supposed to collect and send concentrated solar energy back to earth in the form of microwaves... YAWN. This craft has so much more potential and 'wireless charging' is the detail they choose to share. This sort of sounds like the 'diversion topic' so outlets don't start talking about some of the other likely uses for such a craft. If you've been following the X37 project you likely know it stays up for very long periods of time: OTV-1 was up for 225 days OTV-2 was up for 469 days OTV-3 was in orbit for 675 days OTV-4 launched in 2015 and spent 718 days in space!! OTV-5 which just returned in October of last year after a whopping 780 days in space One can only sur...
The sixth Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite launched today from Cape Canaveral, FL. Dubbed AEHF-6, this mission again used the might Atlas V 551 rocket to carry on the tradition of putting strategic, reliable and secure communications in place for the U.S. Armed forces. While this was the 134th successful launch for United Launch Alliance (ULA), it was the 1st for Space Force. Now that the payload is off the ground, we only have roughly five hours till deployment. We won't get to see the deployment as ULA will not televise/broadcast that portion of the mission because, lets not forget, it is a National Defense satellite, but it's all still exciting non the less. Lots of rockets take off from the East Coast of Florida but arguable non more exciting than this beautiful powerhouse from ULA. With COVID-19 social distancing efforts ramping up, we're not sure what will become of other launches in April/May but we'll be certain to keep you posted. ULA is to be comme...