SpaceX launches U.S. military weather monitoring satellite – SpaceNews

COLORADO SPRINGS A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 11 launched a U.S. Space Force weather monitoring satellite. The vehicle lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7:25 a.m. Pacific.

The USSF-62 mission flew to orbit the U.S. militarys first Weather System Follow-on Microwave (WSF-M) satellite.

Made by Ball Aerospace a company recently acquired by BAE Systems WSF-M has a microwave imager instrument to collect weather data including the measurement of ocean surface wind speed and direction, ice thickness, snow depth, soil moisture and local space weather.

The spacecraft will operate in a low polar orbit. The Space Force has ordered a second WSF-M satellite, projected to be delivered by 2028. These satellites are part of a broader effort to modernize the militarys space-based environmental monitoring assets.

Data used for military planning

The data gathered by WSF-M will be provided to meteorologists in support of the generation of a wide variety of weather products necessary to conduct mission planning and operations globally every day, the U.S. Space Force said.

Just under eight minutes after liftoff and payload separation, the Falcon 9s first stage flew back to Earth and landed at Vandenbergs Landing Zone 4.

USSF-62 is the 37th launch performed by SpaceX so far in 2024 and its second national security space launch mission of the year. In February SpaceX launched the USSF-124 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, deploying six U.S. missile defense satellites for the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency.

Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIAs National Defense... More by Sandra Erwin

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SpaceX launches U.S. military weather monitoring satellite - SpaceNews

Pentagon Says It Has No Record of Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology – Futurism

That's exactly the kind of thing the Pentagon would say. No Aliens

The Pentagon has released a 63-page, unclassified report to the public, concluding that it had found no evidence of extraterrestrials, let alone the secret reverse-engineering of recovered alien technology by the US government, in its investigation of UFO sightings.

It's yet another wet blanket being thrown on recent conspiratorial and increasingly far-fetched claims.

The Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) "found no verifiable evidence that any UAP sighting has represented extraterrestrial activity," the office's acting director Tim Phillips told reporters, as quoted by ABC News.

"AARO has found no verifiable evidence that the US government or private industry has ever had access to extraterrestrial technology" or ever "illegally or inappropriately withheld" information from Congress.

The news comes after Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency David Grusch came forward last year, alleging that the government had secretly recovered alien spacecraft and even dead "pilots" inside them for decades as part of a top-secret UFO retrieval program.

The topic of "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAPs), as they've come to be known in government circles, has hit fever pitch as of late, with government organizations including NASA taking recent reports of UFO sightings more seriously. At the same time, we've seen a resurgence of conspiracy theories, claims of government cover-ups, and plenty of outlandish claims as well.

What brought the topic back into public consciousness was a series of sightings made by US military pilots over the last few decades, as seen in a number of declassified videos.

But as expected, evidence of an extraterrestrial explanation has yet to surface, despite widespread speculation that these mysterious objects were somehow breaking the laws of physics.

According to the latest report, most of the UAP sightings could be blamed on the "misidentification of ordinary phenomena and objects," and some of them may have been due to the rapid emergence of new technologies like drones.

Thanks to the internet, the topic of UFOs is proving "more pervasive now than ever," according to the report.

"Aside from hoaxes and forgeries, misinformation and disinformation is more prevalent and easier to disseminate now than ever before, especially with today's advanced photo, video, and computer generated imagery tools," the report reads.

To get a better sense of what these UAPs could be, the AARO is now working on a real-time UAP sensor technology dubbed "Gremlin," which could be deployed "in reaction to reports," as Phillips told journalists today.

Whether those efforts will end up bearing any fruit, let alone catch aliens, remains to be seen.

More on UFOs: Alien Probes May Have Already Visited Earth, Scientist Says

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Pentagon Says It Has No Record of Reverse-Engineered Alien Technology - Futurism

US Used AI to Help Find Middle East Targets for Airstrikes – Bloomberg

The US used artificial intelligence to identify targets hit by air strikes in the Middle East this month, a defense official said, revealing growing military use of the technology for combat.

Machine learning algorithms that can teach themselves to identify objects helped to narrow down targets for more than 85 US air strikes on Feb. 2, according to Schuyler Moore, chief technology officer for US Central Command, which runs US military operations in the Middle East. The Pentagon said those strikes were conducted by US bombers and fighter aircraft against seven facilities in Iraq and Syria.

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US Used AI to Help Find Middle East Targets for Airstrikes - Bloomberg