Air Force Space Command’s Space Development and Test Wing has successfully concluded the launch and early orbit portion of operations for the Communication Navigation Outage Forecasting System satellite and accepted the spacecraft from the contractor, General Dynamics. C/NOFS launched atop an Orbital Pegasus from the Reagan Test Site, Kwajalein on April 16th, 2008. The check-out portion of the mission was a collaborative effort between the DoD Space Test Program, Space Development and Test Wing located at Kirtland Air Force Base, the Air Force Research Laboratory and General Dynamics.
Project participants include The Aerospace Corporation, General Dynamics, Orbital Sciences Corporation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Naval Research Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA, University of Texas, Jackson and Tull and the National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System Joint Program Office. The mission of C/NOFS is to forecast ionosphere scintillation-caused GPS navigation and UHF communication outages from satellites to ground assets. This forecast will give the warfighter a full understanding of their satellite communications environment allowing them to plan operations accordingly.
