Australia- funded US military satellite launched into orbit

Cape Canaveral ( Florida), Aug. 8: An unmanned Delta 4 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force station in Florida on Wednesday carrying a communications satellite for the US military and its partners, including Australia, which paid for the spacecraft and launch services. The Delta rocket, topped with the sixth Wideband Global Satcom, or WGS, spacecraft lifted off at 8: 29 pm EDT and soared out over the Atlantic Ocean, illuminated by the setting sun, as it headed into space.

The WGS network is used to relay television broadcasts, video conferences, images and other highbandwidth data to and from ships, aircraft, ground forces, operations centres, the US department of state, the White House and select partners worldwide.

“These satellites provide tremendous operational flexibility,” Dave Madden, director of military satellite communications at the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Centre, said during a conference call. “A Navy ship can be operating in X- band and communicate with someone else operating with a Ka- band terminal, and viceversa. The satellite does that conversion for them. That way we can cross- talk across the services and across capabilities,” Mr Madden said.

X- band and Ka- band refer to parts of the electromagnetic spectrum used to relay communication signals. In an unusual partnering arrangement with the US Air Force, Australia paid $ 707 million for Boeing to build the satellite and for United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin to put it into orbit.