Air Force weather satellite remains in launch limbo

The U.S. military wants to launch the final DMSP weather spacecraft, but the fate of the bird that is designed to observe the world’s weather for the warfighter is now waiting approval from Congress. Inside a Lockheed Martin cleanroom in Sunnyvale, California, work goes on to implement the service-life extension modifications to the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program F20 craft to lengthen its service life beyond 80 months in orbit, just in case the budgetary decision is made to launch it as early as 2018. For more than a year, there has been uncertainty if the last satellite would be pressed into service or simply left on the ground in favor of a new, modern constellation of weather observatories coming in the next decade. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - May 12)