SpaceX Launced Military Weather Satellite Thursday Morning

SpaceX launched a military weather satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Thursday morning.

At 7:25 a.m., the Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E).

This satellite is designed to replace that aging satellites from a 60-year-old government program. The United States Space Force-62 (USSF-62) mission featured the launch of the first Weather System Follow-on Microwave (WSF-M) spacecraft.

“We’re absolutely thrilled be out here on the Central Coast, with a superb team primed and ready to launch the USSF-62 satellite. It has an important mission ahead of it and we’re excited for flight-proven Falcon 9 to deliver the satellite to orbit,” said Col. Jim Horne, senior materiel leader for the Space System Command’s Launch Execution Delta, in a statement. “And on this mission, we’re using a first-stage booster whose history is purely commercial.”

In February the U.S. Space System Command announced the successful delivery of the first U.S. Space Force (USSF)-62 Weather System Follow-on – Microwave (WSF-M) Space Vehicle (SV).

Under the leadership of SSC Space Sensing’s Environmental and Tactical Surveillance program office, the WSF-M satellite is the first of two satellites that Ball Aerospace will deliver. This innovative spacecraft represents a new era in the U.S. Space Force’s next generation of modernized, space-based environmental monitoring (SBEM) systems that will augment capabilities provided by the legacy Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). WSF-M will enable the production of enhanced weather prediction and analysis capabilities for joint warfighters conducting mission planning and operations globally.

“The WSF-M satellite is a strategic solution tailored to address three high-priority Department of Defense SBEM gaps – specifically, ocean surface vector winds, tropical cyclone intensity, and energetic charged particles in low Earth orbit,” said David Betz, WSF-M program manager, SSC Space Sensing. “Beyond these primary capabilities, our instruments also provide vital data on sea ice characterization, soil moisture, and snow depth.”

Space Systems Command is the U.S. Space Force’s field command responsible for acquiring, developing, and delivering resilient capabilities and groundbreaking technologies to protect the nation’s strategic advantage in and from space.

This was the third launch of the first stage booster, which previously launched two Starlink missions.

Watch the lift off below:

Liftoff of USSF-62 – SpaceX’s 12th National Security Space Launch on a Falcon rocket pic.twitter.com/PPryxZnOCE

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 11, 2024