After repeated delays to iron out a few problems and then bad weather and ground equipment issues delaying the launch earlier this month, the Air Force Research Lab’s TacSat-3 is on-orbit. An Orbital Science’s Minotaur I booster blasted off from NASA’s Wallops Island, Va., regional launch facility, May 19 at 7:55 p.m. EDT, carrying TacSat-3 and NASA payloads into low Earth orbit. The 880-pound TacSat-3 is the first operationally responsive space mission to comprise payloads based on recommendations from combatant commander. The satellite’s program team successfully communicated with the satellite about 90 minutes after the booster lifted off. “For the next two to three weeks, the TacSat-3 project team will be conducting on-orbit checkout of the spacecraft to ensure optimum performance,” said Dr. Thomas Cooley, TacSat-3 program manager with AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland AFB, N.M. (Space and Missile Systems Center release; Kirtland follow-up release)
There is a new entrant in the highly competitive field of collaborative combat aircraft—semi-autonomous drones meant to fly alongside manned combat aircraft. Northrop Grumman unveiled its new Project Talon aircraft to a small group of reporters at the facilities of its subsidiary Scaled Composites.
