WASHINGTON — The Missile Defense Agency confirmed that a national security space mission that had been projected to launch in December 2023 is being delayed until the second quarter of 2024 due to technical issues with one of the spacecraft.
“One vendor’s space vehicle was ready to support a December 2023 launch; however, the launch was delayed to no earlier than the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 due to technical issues encountered by the other vendor during final integration testing,” MDA spokesman Mark Wright said in a statement.
MDA’s national security mission, designated USSF-124, includes six satellites designed to track hypersonic missiles. Four of the satellites are missile-tracking sensors made by L3Harris for the Space Development Agency’s Tracking Layer constellation. The other two satellites — one made by L3Harris and the other by Northrop Grumman — are part of MDA’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) program.
The Tracking Layer is envisioned as a global network of sensors to provide a defense shield against Russian and Chinese ballistic and hypersonic missiles. While SDA’s satellites are for tracking hypersonic threats, the HBTSS has sensors designed to maintain high-fidelity tracks of the threats, and to hand off the data to interceptor missiles that would attempt to shoot them down.
Both the Tracking Layer and HBTSS are pieces of a planned multi-layered missile-defense architecture. The fire control technology that HBTSS is seeking to demonstrate is required to be able to intercept hypersonic weapons.
SDA and MDA decided to combine their payloads for efficiency. The four L3Harris Transport Layer satellites were originally scheduled to launch in September with other SDA satellites but were taken off the manifest due to production delays.
MDA did not disclose which of the two HBTSS payloads is having technical issues. A source close to SDA said “any delay at this point…
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