Latest news with #U.S.SpaceForce
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
SpaceX set to launch GPS satellite from Florida's Space Coast, weather permitting
SpaceX crews are preparing for a Falcon 9 rocket launch on Friday from Florida's Space Coast. SpaceX is targeting 1:23 p.m. for the launch of a next-generation GPS satellite. Officials said GPS III-7 is designed to enhance the accuracy and security of the Global Positioning System that powers everything from smartphones to military systems. The GPS III-7 satellite, part of the U.S. Space Force's modernization efforts, will be delivered to orbit where it will join a constellation of satellites. This mission continues SpaceX's rapid-fire launch cadence. This will be the 5th rocket launch for SpaceX this week, including three Starlink launches and the 9th test flight of its Starship mega rocket. SpaceX is also continuing to focus on its cost-saving reusable rockets. The first-stage booster for this launch has already flow for three other missions, including CRS-32, NROL-69, and a Starlink deployment. After the launch, SpaceX will one again attempt to launch the first-sage booster on its droneship, 'A Shortfall of Gravitas,' in the Atlantic Ocean. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
UPI
a day ago
- Science
- UPI
SpaceX plans launch of advanced GPS satellite for Space Force
A SpaceX launch of an advanced GPS satellite for the U.S. Space Force was scheduled for a 1:23 p.m. ET Friday launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is prepared to launch the GPS 3 satellite from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida on Friday. Photo by Joe Marino/UPI | License Photo May 30 (UPI) -- A SpaceX launch of an advanced GPS satellite for the U.S. Space Force was scheduled for a 1:23 p.m. ET Friday launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. A Falcon 9 rocket will put the GPS III SV-08 into orbit. According to SpaceX, prep work for the launch was done in less than three days, a new record for U.S. national security missions. Those preparations normally take 18-24 months. Space Force Col. Jim Horne hailed the speed of the preparation. He said the launch "highlights another instance of the Space Force's ability to complete high-priority launches on a rapid timescale, which demonstrates the capability to respond to emergent constellation needs as rapidly as Space Vehicle readiness allows." In a pre-launch briefing Launch Weather Officer Mark Burger said the weather outlook shows a 45% chance for favorable weather for Friday's launch. "We'll be looking at those cumulus cloud violations and associated thunderstorms in and close to the pad," Burger said. GPS III satellite maker Lockheed Martin said the company got notice to take the SV-08 satellite out of storage for the launch Feb. 21. Despite the rapid launch schedule for this one, compared with the SV-07 satellite it was less challenging, according to the company. "I'll say somewhat tongue-in-cheek, compared to SV-07, this was, I'll say, a relatively less punishing path to launch, primarily because of the challenges we faced on SV-07, whether it was ground transportation or the RRT climate," Lockheed Martin vice president of Navigations Systems Malik Musawwir said. Just preparing the satellite can take four to five months due to the need for full integration of components stored separately. Two more of the satellites are stored for future launches using ULA Vulcan rockets with no plans to reassign them to SpaceX.
Canada Standard
3 days ago
- Politics
- Canada Standard
Trump claims Canada would need to pay 61 bln USD to join
WASHINGTON, May 28 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that Canada would need to pay 61 billion U.S. dollars to join his proposed "Golden Dome" missile defense system. "I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System, that it will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State," Trump wrote on Truth Social post. Trump announced Tuesday the 175 billion U.S. dollar missile shield project, appointing U.S. Space Force General Michael Guetlein to lead what Trump described as a "Manhattan Project-scale" initiative. The system is designed to create a comprehensive network of satellites capable of detecting, tracking, and intercepting incoming missiles. The project represents a substantial evolution from what was initially announced as the "Iron Dome for America" in the Trump administration's first week, before being renamed "Golden Dome" by the Pentagon in February. Trump's post comes on the same day as the throne speech was delivered in Canada's Parliament by King Charles III, the head of state for both Canada and the United Kingdom, "during which he asserted Canada's sovereignty and Prime Minister Mark Carney committed his government to joining a major European defence rearmament plan," reported Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday. Carney told the broadcasting network's Power & Politics program in an interview following the speech that he hopes Canada will be able to join ReArm Europe by July 1, a step aimed at reducing the country's dependence on the United States for weapons and munitions, according to the report. Trump has repeatedly threatened Canadian sovereignty, expressing a desire to annex Canada and turn it into the 51st U.S. state. Carney told Trump earlier this month during an Oval Office meeting that Canada is "not for sale."
Mint
4 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
Trump's ‘Golden Dome' riles nuclear-armed foes
President Trump's 'Golden Dome" plan has riled the three countries whose weapons technology poses the greatest threat to American territory, with China, Russia and North Korea claiming the missile-defense project is driving a dangerous new arms race. Trump wants a Golden Dome shield in place by the end of his term, which would combine ground-based interceptors with satellites to guard U.S. territory against high-tech threats, including hypersonic missiles. The Chinese, North Koreans and Russians are all developing such missiles, as well as new weapons intended to evade U.S. defenses and combat America in outer space. The three are also increasingly helping each other militarily. North Korea slammed the Golden Dome on Tuesday as the 'largest arms-buildup plan in history." China and Russia in a joint statement earlier this month called the project 'deeply destabilizing." Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, in a briefing to journalists Tuesday, said the plan 'represented a direct disruption to the foundations of strategic stability." All three countries have also denounced Trump's call for space-based interceptors, saying they risk turning space into a battlefield. Experts say that a potential risk of the Golden Dome is that a comprehensive defensive system encourages a proliferation of missiles, including nuclear-capable weapons. It comes as the last major nuclear treaty between leading nuclear powers Russia and the U.S. is set to expire next year, potentially leading Moscow to accelerate the deployment of nuclear warheads. 'This missile-defense mirage gives you the illusion you can protect yourself but you're driving all these countries to build all these hundreds and thousands of missiles so you end up in the worst of both worlds," said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. The U.S. says increasing threats make it necessary to build a more comprehensive missile-defense system and rejects criticism that the plan will militarize space. 'We have more recently observed China's satellites engaging in what can only be described as dogfighting maneuvers in space," said Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, the U.S. Space Force commander in the Indo-Pacific, at a space conference in Australia on Tuesday. 'These high-speed, combat-oriented operations on orbit serve as further evidence that Beijing is actively preparing to challenge the U.S. and our allies in space." The Golden Dome plan represents a dramatic transformation in how the U.S. aims to confront such threats. The U.S. says its missile defenses are directed at so-called 'rogue states," primarily North Korea, which aren't considered peer nuclear powers. Meanwhile, the U.S, Russia and China seek to prevent nuclear attack through deterrence. Trump's Golden Dome plan implicitly recognizes that the arms-control era has passed and mutually assured destruction is no longer a sufficient deterrent to nuclear war. A major emerging concern for U.S. defense is hypersonic weapons, which can travel at least five times the speed of sound, fly low and maneuver before hitting a target, making them difficult to detect, let alone intercept. In the hypersonic race, the U.S. is behind. China, the leader, tested such a missile in 2021, which flew at speeds of more than 15,000 miles an hour as it circled the globe before striking a target in China. In a sign of the Pentagon's progress, the U.S. military recently completed successful test flights of a reusable hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. When President Vladimir Putin first introduced Russia's hypersonic weapons in 2018, an animated graphic showed a missile heading toward the West Coast of the U.S. 'Missile-defense systems are useless against them, absolutely pointless," he said. Russia's hypersonic weapons could potentially be stopped by a system such as the proposed Golden Dome because they travel at much slower speeds during initial launch and before hitting their target, leaving them susceptible to interceptors, said David Wright at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Intercepting Russia's strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles could be much harder. At the first stage after launch, when a rocket pushes the missile up into—and out of—the atmosphere, an interceptor would have to be extremely close to respond to it in time. That would mean covering the territory across all of Russia's 11 time zones to intercept the missile in time, said Podvig. 'You need to have a lot of them so that some of them are close enough to every launch point," he said. North Korea already has a missile with the range to potentially strike the U.S.—and leader Kim Jong Un wants more long-range weapons that can fly farther, carry bigger payloads and be deployed more quickly. The country is pursuing hypersonic technology, underwater nuclear-armed drones and tactical weaponry, although military experts say they aren't yet combat-ready. The U.S. installed dozens of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California beginning in the early 2000s, and has tested interceptors fired by the Aegis combat system to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles, a system that was used successfully by Navy destroyers against Iranian weapons targeting Israel last year. Land-based versions of the system have been installed in Romania and Poland. The U.S. also fields Patriot missile systems for shorter-range threats and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, which is used for smaller areas including in South Korea and Guam. Trump's goal of seeing his Golden Dome shield in place in little more than three years would be difficult to accomplish, according to military experts. Any missile-defense shield would likely only offer protection from about 85% of incoming missiles, said Podvig. That could promote a false sense of security, while also spurring rivals to produce more weapons, he said. Golden Dome plans for space-based interceptors have also raised concerns of a surge in space-based systems. A Congressional Budget Office assessment said that such a system for downing one or two missiles fired by a smaller adversary such as North Korea could require more than 1,000 interceptors. To defend against Russia or China, with many more warheads, such a system would require potentially tens of thousands of satellites. Russia and China view such space-based interceptors 'as indistinguishable from offensive weapons, arguing that a better-protected United States might be emboldened to pursue more aggressive military actions," said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'This heightens the risk of Russia and China intensifying their development of anti-satellite and other counter-space capabilities." China has been rapidly building its own nuclear forces. It has added some 350 missile silos and several bases for road-mobile launchers in recent years, according to a report led by Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Of China's more than 700 launchers for land-based missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, 462 can be loaded with missiles capable of reaching the U.S., the report found. China's nuclear ballistic-missile submarines, the Type 094, are being equipped with a longer-range ballistic missile. A newer model, known as the Type 096, is now being developed to run more quietly than its predecessor. In 2019, China unveiled refit bombers with an air-launched ballistic missile that could potentially carry a nuclear warhead, the Pentagon said. 'It's not driving up forces to the level that we saw in the early Cold War days—not yet," said Kristensen. 'But there's no doubt that all of the factors that we can see at play, all the dynamics that are playing out in front of us, increasingly so, are the very ones that can create a nuclear arms race." Write to Austin Ramzy at Thomas Grove at and Timothy W. Martin at
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
New monument unveiled completes Veterans Memorial Plaza at annual Memorial Day ceremony
A new monument was unveiled and completed the plaza at Centerville's Veterans Memorial at their annual ceremony Monday morning. [DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] The City of Centerville honored veterans at their annual Memorial Day tribute Monday at 9 a.m. They showcased new additions to the Veterans Memorial at Stubbs Park on 255 West Spring Valley Road. Three new enhancements were made to the park, according to a media release. TRENDING STORIES: Fire-breathing or fire-fighting? Bearded dragon saves owner from house fire Former Ohio State football player seriously injured in deadly ATV crash Officers investigating reported stabbing in Dayton neighborhood A new monument honoring the U.S. Space Force was revealed. This monument completes the plaza's representation of all six branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. The main monument and the brick walkaround path saw the additions of the Global War on Terror. And a new entry lectern that 'highlights the features and symbolism of the plaza,' was added, according to the release. Commander of the National Space and Intelligence Center for the U.S. Space Force Col. Marcus Sparks delivered the ceremony's keynote address. Centerville Mayor Brooks Compton also spoke at the event. 'The Veterans Memorial Plaza enhancements reflect Centerville's continued commitment to recognizing service members past and present, and to ensuring future generations understand the cost of freedom,' Centerville Community Resources Coordinator Drew Simon said in the release. [SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
