An unarmed Minuteman III ICBM lifted off from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., en route to the Kwajalein test range in the central Pacific during a routine test of the accuracy and reliability of the Minuteman weapon system, announced officials with the base’s 30th Space Wing. The Feb. 25 mission “proceeded as planned,” they said.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.