A C-17 aircrew flew specialized medical teams and a patient requiring special equipment never before used on board a transatlantic mission some 5,000 miles from Ramstein AB, Germany, to San Antonio, announced Ramstein officials. During the July 10 flight, the patient, the spouse of an Active Duty airman, received treatment with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation equipment, states Ramstein’s July 12 release. “ECMO is designed to replace the heart and lung function as a temporary measure to give the body the ability to recover,” said Lt. Col. David Zonies, ECMO program medical director at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. ECMO specialists from the San Antonio Military Medical Center provided continual care throughout the flight, alongside Landstuhl medical staff. “We have practiced this type of movement in short chunks,” said Maj. Michelle Langdon, critical care air-transport team lead within US Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa. (Ramstein report by SrA. Hailey Haux)
The Space Force recently awarded SpaceX $739 million to launch nine missions for the Space Development Agency and National Reconnaissance Office over the next three years. Five of the awarded launches will be to build out SDA’s constellation of missile warning and tracking satellites in low-Earth orbit.
