The U.S. Air Force's proposed next-generation weather satellite program will consist of a single satellite carrying three instruments that would launch in 2021 or 2022, a service official said Nov. 7. In a speech here at the Capitol Hill Club, Col. Heath Collins, deputy director of the remote sensing directorate at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, offered previously unpublicized details of the service's Weather Satellite Follow-on program, saying the service would rely on the system to fill three main data requirements: ocean-surface wind speed and direction, tropical cyclone intensity, and charged particles in low Earth orbit with the potential to affect satellites.
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