Welcome to the USSF-62 Launch Discussion and Updates Thread!
Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-04-11, 14:25 |
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Scheduled for (local) | 2024-04-11, 07:25 (PDT) |
Launch site | SLC-4E, Vandenberg SFB, California |
Payload | USSF-62 |
Booster | B1082-3 |
Landing site | LZ-4 |
Customer | Department of Defense |
Mission success criteria | Successful delivery of payloads to Sun-Synchronous Orbit |
Webcasts
Stream | Link |
---|---|
Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVBRa0diyg |
Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh9rJKPJ4Eo |
NASASpaceflight | |
The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXTf-uotkFc |
SpaceX | https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1778424969900499061 |
The Space Devs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LTpHAM3OfE |
Stats
Sourced from NextSpaceflight and r/SpaceX:
☑️ 13th launch from SLC-4E this year
☑️ 4 days, 12:00:00 turnaround for this pad
☑️ 17th landing on LZ-4
☑️ 37th Falcon 9 launch this year, 38th SpaceX launch this year
☑️ 251st consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch (excluding Amos-6) (if successful)
☑️ 337th SpaceX mission overall (excluding Starship hops)
☑️ 350th SpaceX launch all time (including Starship hops)
☑️ 297th Falcon Family Booster landing, 305th Falcon recovery attempt
Mission and payload info
WSF-M (Weather System Follow-on - Microwave) is the next-generation operational environmental satellite system for the Department of Defense (DoD), to replace the microwave wavelength weather forecasting capabilities of the DMSP satellites.
Ball Aerospace has been selected in late November 2017 to be the prime contractor for 2 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) weather satellites with a passive microwave imaging radiometer instrument and hosted Government furnished energetic charged particle (ECP) sensor space weather payload developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. The radiometer leverages the Ball-built Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument.
This mission will improve weather forecasting over maritime regions by taking global measurements of the atmosphere and ocean surface.
MECO, stage separation, M-vac ignition, stage 1 boostback burn, and fairing separation.
Edit: Fairings previously supported USSF-52. First NSSL mission with flight-proven fairings.