Successful Launch of Air Force's Weather Satellite to Orbit
April 3, 2014
A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V
rocket successfully launched the Air Force's Defense
Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP-19) payload at
7:46 a.m. PDT today from Space Launch
Complex-3. This is the third mission of 15 scheduled for 2014 and
the 80th mission since ULA was formed in
December 2006.
"Congratulations to the Air Force and all
of our mission partners on this morning's successful launch of
DMSP-19! ULA takes tremendous pride in the national
capabilities we place on orbit for our customers and in the critical
information that satellites such as DMSP provide to military and
civilian users worldwide," said
Jim Sponnick, ULA vice
president, Atlas and Delta Programs. "Achieving on-time launches for
our customer's missions with 100 percent mission success is a
testament to this strong government and industry team being
singularly focused on one launch at a time."
This mission was launched aboard an Atlas
V 401 configuration vehicle, which includes a 4-meter diameter
payload fairing. The Atlas booster for this mission was powered by
the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine, and the Centaur upper stage was powered
by a single Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10A-4 engine.
For the past 50 years, the DMSP satellites
have fulfilled the military's most critical requirements for global
atmospheric, oceanic, terrestrial and space environment information.
Through these satellites, military users find, track and forecast
weather systems over remote and hostile areas for deployed
troops. Additionally, DMSP supports a broad range of civil users
with sensing capabilities not provided by U.S. civil and foreign
weather satellite systems.
