An Ariane V rocket lifting off from Kourou, French Guiana, boosts into orbit the SES-2 communications satellite, which hosts USAF’s first payload on a commercial satellite. The experimental Air Force payload, dubbed Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload (CHIRP), also is the first wide-field-of- view infrared staring payload in space.
The Space Force has selected an initial pool of vendors that will compete to build sensors and satellites that track airborne targets, as Pentagon officials push to transform the capability from a prototyping effort to an operational one.
