Missile warning satellite moving to Atlas V rocket for launch next week

James Dean
Florida Today
The Air Force's fourth geosynchronous Space Based Infrared System missile warning satellite was encapsulated inside a payload fairing Tuesday at Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville. The satellite was expected to be attached to a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Thursday, Jan. 11.

A military satellite was scheduled to be hoisted atop an Atlas V rocket Thursday morning in preparation for launch a week later from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The missile warning satellite is targeting liftoff from Launch Complex 41 at 7:52 p.m. next Thursday, Jan. 18.

Part of the Air Force's Space Based Infrared System, or SBIRS, the spacecraft will be the fourth placed in a high geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles above the equator.

The launch comes almost exactly a year after ULA and the Air Force delivered the system's third spacecraft to orbit on Jan. 20, 2017.

The Air Force said the fourth satellite, referred to as SBIRS GEO Flight 4, was enclosed inside the rocket's nose cone Tuesday in an Astrotech Space Operations high bay in Titusville.

That event was "a significant milestone in GEO Flight-4's launch process as it marks the satellite's completion of all major testing milestones prior to launch," the Air Force said.

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The roughly 10,000-pound satellite built by Lockheed Martin was to be transported to Launch Complex 41 Thursday and attached to the Atlas V inside a processing tower called the Vertical Integration Facility.

While that work is in progress, ULA crews across the country will be preparing a Delta IV rocket to launch a classified National Reconnaissance Office mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 4 p.m. EST. Weather scrubbed the mission's first countdown on Wednesday.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.