SpaceX is about to launch a GPS satellite to orbit on Wednesday morning (Jan. 18), and you may watch the liftoff dwell.
A Falcon 9 booster from SpaceX is scheduled to ship GPS III House Car 06, a complicated World Positioning System satellite, to space on Wednesday at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 GMT) from House Launch Complicated 40 at Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station in Florida. Watch it dwell right here at House.com courtesy of SpaceX or directly via the company (opens in new tab).
The launch will likely be SpaceX’s fourth in 2023 and, as standard, the primary stage of the Falcon 9 will try a touchdown roughly eight minutes after launch.
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This GPS satellite is called after Amelia Earhart, a outstanding feminine aviation pioneer who was the primary non-male pilot to fly throughout the Atlantic Ocean. This launch would be the sixth of the GPS III collection; the final one, named after Neil Armstrong, launched in June 2021.
The satellite will likely be launched on behalf of the U.S. Space Force as half of a bigger push to modernize the nation’s GPS fleet. The brand new satellite has an anticipated lifetime of 15 years and can ultimately type a part of a set of 32 next-generation satellites, according to its maker, Lockheed Martin (opens in new tab).
The most recent era of GPS spacecraft has as much as thrice higher accuracy, eight instances enchancment in anti-jamming techniques and a brand new modular design for diversifications “to higher handle altering mission wants and rising threats,” Lockheed Martin said.
The corporate says that roughly half the world’s inhabitants (or 4 billion customers) depends on GPS know-how for the whole lot from transportation to express agriculture monitoring to utility infrastructure (a few of which makes use of GPS partly to pinpoint service areas.)
The U.S. GPS community is just not the one set of navigation satellites out there, nevertheless. The European Union has an unbiased set generally known as Galileo, Russia has GLONASS, and China has a system known as Beidou. Independence of GPS techniques is commonly raised as an necessary matter of nationwide sovereignty and safety, particularly within the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a ebook about space drugs. Comply with her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
