While the failed launch of NASA’s Glory satellite highlighted the complex risk involved in putting satellites in orbit, the Air Force has not lost a payload during a launch since a software glitch doomed a Milstar communications satellite back in April 1999. “We are at 75 and holding for successful national security space launches,” Air Force Space Command officials told the Daily Report Thursday in response to a written query. NSS launches include all AFSPC, Navy, Missile Defense Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and National Reconnaissance Office orbital missions, they said. Due to a shroud-separation failure, the Glory climate research satellite did not reach orbit during its March 4 launch aboard a Taurus XL rocket fired from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. (For background on the NASA launch, see Los Angeles Times report)
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.