The launch of an Atlas V rocket carrying the secret Silent Barker mission’s surveillance satellites, which was canceled in late August last year due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Idalia in Florida, will take place on Saturday, the responsible company, United Launch Alliance (ULA), reported on Thursday.
Also known as NROL-107, the mission, involving the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the US Space Force, is the last of an Atlas V as ULA will replace that rocket with the Vulcan Centaur.
The Atlas V 551 rocket will lift off from a platform at Cape Canaveral Aerospace Base in Florida and is tasked with delivering multiple top-secret payloads into geosynchronous orbit.
Located about 35,786 kilometers from Earth, this orbit allows spacecraft to remain stationary over fixed points on our planet.
The mission managers said in a statement that today’s forecast shows an 85 percent probability that the weather conditions for the Atlas V launch at Cape Canaveral on Saturday, September 9 at 08:51 local time (12:51 GMT ) are cheap.
The Silent Atlas V Barker/NROL-107 mission will act as a “watchdog” in geosynchronous orbit, keeping tabs on any satellites that reposition themselves to better see US spacecraft or even conduct counterattacks in space, according to the director of the National Recognition Office, Chris Scolese.
The mission is designed to “deter” potential adversaries of the United States, added Space Force Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, commander of Space Systems Command, on a conference call last August.
Neither the NRO nor the Space Force have announced the number of surveillance satellites they will send into space or their exact capabilities.
Hurricane Idalia, which hit the northwest coast of Florida on August 30 as a Category 3 cyclone, claimed two lives in that state directly before continuing its way to the east coast of the United States.
