SpaceX launches advanced GPS satellite for US Space Force, nails the landing - Space.com

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket lifted disconnected from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station successful Florida  on Wednesday (Jan. 18) greeting astatine 7:24 a.m. EST (1224 GMT) with a caller navigation outer of the U.S. GPS constellation aboard.

The launch, already SpaceX's 4th successful 2023, utilized a refurbished Falcon 9 first-stage booster, which antecedently propelled to the International Space Station Crew 5 astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada of NASA, Japanese ngo specializer Koichi Wakata and Russia's Anna Kikina. 

The archetypal signifier successfully separated from the payload-carrying precocious signifier astir 2 minutes and 40 seconds aft clearing the motorboat pad astatine Space Launch Complex 40 astatine Cape, and safely descended backmost to Earth, landing connected SpaceX's drone vessel called 'A Shortfall of Gravitas' astir 8 minutes and 40 seconds aft lift-off. 

Related: 8 ways SpaceX has transformed spaceflight forever

SpaceX said successful the motorboat livestream that the fairing, which protected the payload during the archetypal signifier of the rocket's ascend, volition beryllium recovered from the Atlantic Ocean for imaginable aboriginal reuse. 

The GPS III Space Vehicle 06, an precocious Global Positioning System satellite, continued to orbit aft the archetypal signifier and fairing separation atop Falcon 9's precocious stage. The precocious signifier delivered the payload into an altitude of astir 2,670 miles (4,300 kilometers) supra Earth's aboveground wherever it released the outer astir 1 hr and 30 minutes aft lift-off.

The satellite, named Amelia Earhart aft the celebrated pistillate aviator and archetypal pistillate to successfully alert crossed the Atlantic Ocean, volition present proceed connected its ain to its operational orbit 12,500 miles (20,200 km) supra our planet. 

Amelia Earhart is the sixth of the GPS III series; the past one, named aft Neil Armstrong, launched successful June 2021. The satellite, owned and operated by the U.S. Space Force, is portion of a larger propulsion to modernize the nation's GPS fleet. The caller outer has an expected beingness of 15 years and volition yet signifier portion of a acceptable of 32 next-generation satellites, according to its maker, Lockheed Martin (opens successful caller tab).

The latest procreation of GPS spacecraft has up to 3 times amended accuracy, 8 times betterment successful anti-jamming systems and a caller modular plan for adaptations "to amended code changing ngo needs and emerging threats," Lockheed Martin stated.

The institution says that astir fractional the world's colonisation (or 4 cardinal users) relies connected GPS exertion for everything from proscription to precise agriculture monitoring to inferior infrastructure (some of which uses GPS successful portion to pinpoint work areas).

The U.S. GPS web is not the lone acceptable of navigation satellites available, however. The European Union has an autarkic acceptable known arsenic Galileo, Russia has GLONASS, and China has a strategy called Beidou. Independence of GPS systems is often raised arsenic an important substance of nationalist sovereignty and security, particularly successful the aftermath of Russia's penetration of Ukraine successful February 2022.

 Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller (opens successful caller tab)?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a publication astir abstraction medicine. Follow her connected Twitter @howellspace. Follow america connected Twitter @Spacedotcom oregon Facebook.