After repeated delays to iron out a few problems and then bad weather and ground equipment issues delaying the launch earlier this month, the Air Force Research Lab’s TacSat-3 is on-orbit. An Orbital Science’s Minotaur I booster blasted off from NASA’s Wallops Island, Va., regional launch facility, May 19 at 7:55 p.m. EDT, carrying TacSat-3 and NASA payloads into low Earth orbit. The 880-pound TacSat-3 is the first operationally responsive space mission to comprise payloads based on recommendations from combatant commander. The satellite’s program team successfully communicated with the satellite about 90 minutes after the booster lifted off. “For the next two to three weeks, the TacSat-3 project team will be conducting on-orbit checkout of the spacecraft to ensure optimum performance,” said Dr. Thomas Cooley, TacSat-3 program manager with AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland AFB, N.M. (Space and Missile Systems Center release; Kirtland follow-up release)
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.