This week’s planned launch of the SpaceLoft-6 sounding rocket from Spaceport America in Upham, N.M., is meant to demonstrate a number of key technologies for future Defense Department operationally responsive space missions. The SpaceLoft XL rocket will carry seven payloads during its 13-minute, 70-mile-high trek, which is currently scheduled for Thursday. Among them is the Florida Institute of Technology-designed Global Positioning Metric Tracking System to record the position of the rocket throughout its flight, said Peter Wegner, director of the Pentagon’s ORS office at Kirtland AFB, N.M. There is also a low-cost camera demonstrator and a NASA “DroidSat,” built off the Android phone technology, to record the separation events on the rocket, he said. “This is important to us because the ORS-3 mission scheduled for next year has 17 different payloads that will separate off that rocket during its trajectory,” stated Wegner. (Kirtland release by Michael P. Kleiman)
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.