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)
DNI: Cyber Is The Common Weapon Among Top Adversaries
April 17, 2021
The top four U.S. adversaries—China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—are improving their military capabilities but relying increasingly on cyber means to challenge the U.S. and blunt its influence around the world, the intelligence community's annual threat assessment says. The report comes amid military tensions with both China and Russia.