Spaceflight Now described the launch and mission as follows, “The GPS 3 SV06 spacecraft is the sixth in a line of GPS 3-series satellites built by Lockheed Martin. In its launch configuration fully fueled with propellant, the satellite weighs 9,595 pounds (4,352 kilograms), according to Col. Jung Ha, senior materiel leader for the GPS Space Vehicles Acquisition Delta at Space Systems Command.

Andre Trotter, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of navigation systems, said ‘the company has four more GPS 3-series satellites ready for “call up” by the Space Force. “We currently have four more GPS satellites in our Colorado facility that are available for launch and are prepared to answer the Space Force’s call,’ Trotter told reporters Tuesday in a pre-launch news conference. Those satellites, numbered GPS 3 SV07 through SV10, are the final spacecraft in Lockheed Martin’s initial batch of GPS 3 satellites ordered by the Pentagon in 2008.

The series of GPS 3 navigation satellites are designed for 15-year life spans, an improvement over the seven-and-a-half year and 12-year design lives of previous-generation GPS satellites. The GPS 3 satellites provide three times better accuracy and up to eight times improved anti-jamming capabilities over early GPS spacecraft, according to Lockheed Martin.

The GPS 3 satellites also introduce a new L-band civilian signal that is compatible with other international navigation satellite networks, such as Europe’s Galileo program. Combining signals from GPS, Galileo, and other navigation satellites can improve the precision of space-based position measurements.

The U.S. military uses GPS satellites for smart bombs and other precision-guided munitions. Troops rely on the network, which requires a minimum of 24 satellites for global coverage, to provide positioning data pole-to-pole.”

Please refer to SpaceX Launch site for a replay…

https://www.spacex.com/launches/

(Please know this link will take you to an external website.)

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