Airmen with Air Force Space Command’s 1st Space Operations Squadron at Schriever AFB, Colo., picked up responsibility for the latest Global Positioning System satellite—GPS IIR-M 15 launched Sept. 25 aboard a Delta II from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla.—after booster separation. The 1st SOPS airmen plan to guide it into permanent orbit, where it will circle the Earth every 12 hours, before they hand it over next week to its permanent minders with the 2nd Space Operations Squadron, also at Schriever.
Lockheed Martin projects more than a billion dollars of losses on a classified program, but company officials said April 23 they are confident it will turn profitable by 2028 and become a "franchise" system in the U.S. military.