U.S. Air Force receives nanosatellites

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., Dec. 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Air Force has received two nanosatellites from Boeing to assess the capabilities of such devices in military space operations.

The satellites weight 9 pounds and are 11.8x3.93x3.93 inches in size.

"We anticipate these nanosatellites will play a significant role as affordable and resilient assets in future Air Force space architectures," said Col. Scott Beidleman, director, Development Planning Directorate, Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. "We look forward to the important data they will collect and provide to the warfighter."

Added Bruce Chesley, Boeing director of Advanced Space and Intelligence Systems: "The SENSE nanosats offer customers an affordable, operationally robust option to conduct military missions using spacecraft no larger than a standard loaf of bread."

The two Space Environmental NanoSat Experiment satellites will be launched next summer to collect and transmit weather data. Each has a sensor and GPS receiver and an S-band transceiver to downlink spacecraft and mission data at a speed of 1 megabit per second.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research, SRI International, The Aerospace Corp., and Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates worked with Boeing on the project to build the satellites and integrate their systems.