A satellite made in Sunnyvale will launch Tuesday from Cape Canaveral, part of a project to give the U.S. military better mobile communications in the polar regions, remote deserts and other isolated environments.
Lockheed Martin made the craft for the Navy s Mobile User Objective Satellite (MUOS) program, which is sending its third such satellite into orbit atop an Atlas V rocket after previous launches in 2012 and 2013.
Says Lockheed: This satellite program delivers smartphone-like capabilities to warfighters in austere environments that would be otherwise isolated from such high-speed voice and data communications. Unlike previous systems, MUOS provides users an on-demand capability to transmit and receive high-quality voice and mission data, on a high-speed Internet Protocol-based system. Essentially, the satellite constellation acts like a smartphone network in the sky providing secure mobile connectivity to previously unreachable areas.
There s about an 80 percent chance the rocket will take off Tuesday night (4:43 p.m. Pacific time, a night launch in Florida.)
In other Silicon Valley satellite news:
Google could be planting a new flag in Silicon Valley s space race, according to a report that the company is nearing a major investment in Elon Musk s SpaceX project to launch satellites that provide Internet service on Earth.
The Information on Monday morning described an emerging deal for Google to fund Hawthorne-based SpaceX s satellite connectivity project. Neither company returned a request for comment Monday.
The report comes just days after satellite-industry entrepreneur Greg Wyder, who was leading a similar effort for Google before quitting last year, announced his own company s plans to create global connectivity through a 648-satellite constellation with funding from Richard Branson s Virgin Group and Qualcomm.
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