Fueled and Ready

The two Space Tracking and Surveillance System satellites scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral, FL, next month are fully fueled and awaiting their marriage onto their booster, according to a Northrop Grumman official.

The satellites are scheduled to be launched on Sept. 15 aboard a single Delta II booster rocket between 8 pm and 9 pm Eastern Daylight Time, according to a Northrop fact sheet.

"We've stacked them on each other and on top of their orbit insertion stage, so this configuration is now ready to be mounted onto the booster and moved out to the launch pad, so we're very close," Fred Ricker, vice president of military systems for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems' Space Systems Division, said in a telephone interview this morning from the Space and Missile Defense Command's annual conference in Huntsville, AL.

The two satellites will be placed in the same orbit, one in advance of the other, according to Ricker, who added:

So there'll be a leader and a follower, and what that allows us to do, then, is to become participants in ((Missile Defense Agency)) tests that will be carried out over the Pacific primarily. We'll be able to view target missiles that are launched from both satellites, and in doing so we'll be able to create a stereo viewing. That stereo view will be converted into an accurate, three-dimensional track that's describing the trajectory of the target missile, and that's what allows us to pass on the information about that track to the ((Ballistic Missile Defense)) System that will be taking that information, providing it to other parts of the system so that you can coordinate ultimately an intercept.