The U.S. Air Force has completed the initial activation of its first jam-proof Advanced Extremely High Frequency military communications satellite, and begun on-orbit testing.
Ground terminals at Schriever AFB, Colo. and MIT/Lincoln Labs, Mass. logged in to the Lockheed Martin-built satellite as part of its startup process. The Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles AFB plans to transfer responsibility for the satellite to 14th Air Force early next year.
“By the end of November we should have completed sufficient testing to confidently make the decision on whether to ship and subsequently launch SV-2 in April 2012,” says Dave Madden, director of SMC’s Milsatcom Systems Directorate.
Worth more than $1 billion and built on Lockheed Martin’s A2100 satellite bus, AEHF-1 required 14 months to reach orbit more than 22,000 mi. above Earth, after its Aug. 14, 2010, launch.
Though launch was nominal, foreign object debris in the propulsion system was later found to be the culprit that prevented the liquid apogee engine to burn properly and propel the satellite higher into orbit.
These problems forced Lockheed to forfeit $15 million of its available remaining award fee at the time.
The total cost of the recovery mission, including assembling a team comprising the nation’s top orbital scientists and conducting painstaking forensics and reviews on the satellite prelaunch, was estimated at $25 million.
Total cost for development, which began in 2002, and buying six AEHF satellites is at least $13.5 billion.
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