An unmanned Delta 4 rocket was poised for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Wednesday to put a communications satellite into orbit for the US military and its partners, including Australia, which paid for the spacecraft and launch services. Lift-off of the sixth Wideband Global Satcom, or WGS, spacecraft was scheduled for 8:29 pm EDT (0029 GMT).
The orbital network is used to relay television broadcasts, video conferences, images and other high-bandwidth data to and from ships, aircraft, ground forces, operations centers, the US Department of State, the White House and select partners world-wide. "These satellites provide tremendous operational flexibility," Dave Madden, director of military satellite communications at the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, told reporters 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 vice-versa. The satellite does that conversion for them. That way we can cross-talk across the services and across capabilities," 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.
In exchange, Australia can use a percentage of the WGS network through 2029, when its 22-year agreement with the Air Force expires. "This sharing of resources is very consistent with what the Department of Defence wants to do to form stronger coalitions with our allied partnerships, to share costs of operations," Madden said. "It really helps all parties." The Air Force has a similar agreement in place with Canada, Denmark, Luxemburg, Netherlands and New Zealand, which are banding together to pay for the ninth WGS spacecraft.
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