Technical Glitch Delays Air Force AEHF 2 Mission
By Jeffrey Hill | May 4, 2012
[Satellite TODAY 05-04-12] The U.S. Air Force has postponed the planned launch of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency 2 (AEHF 2) satellite by at least one day due to a technical glitch that was discovered during an attempted liftoff, the Air Force announced May 3.
ULA will attempt to launch AEHF 2 on May 4 at 2:42 p.m.
The AEHF 2 satellite was supposed to launch during the afternoon of May 3 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop a ULA Atlas 5 rocket. The launch team detected a flow problem in one of the Atlas 5’s systems. ULA engineers weren’t able to fix it in time to attempt the launch a second time.
The $1.7 billion satellite is part of the AEHF network, which will include up to six spacecraft. The new constellation was designed as an upgrade over the U.S. military’s current Milstar system. The first AEHF satellite was launched in August 2010.