The first phase of a 12-year, one billion dollar program to upgrade American launch facilities is nearing completion, the Air Force Space Command announced Thursday.
Space Command has been upgrading its East Coast launch range, based at the Cape Canaveral Air Station. The range was closed at the end of July and for much of August while landline communication systems were upgraded to a primarily satellite-based system.
According to the Air Force, this will improve the way launch-related data is transmitted, decrease the cost of launches, and increase safety.
"We see modernization as an opportunity to reduce system life cycle costs, increase reliability and elimnate some of the system roadblocks to a higher launch tempo," Maj. Thurston Wilson, AFSPC's chief of range modernization, said in a statement.
Phase two will upgrade scheduling systems and weather displays and instrumentation on both the East and West launch ranges. The Air Force will also improve its surveillance and fight safety systems.
At completion, the Range Standardization and Automation program, as it is called, will decrease the time needed to prepare the launch area for a launch to four hours, down from 24 to 48 hours, the Air Force said. That could boost the potential number of launches in a given time by 20 percent.
"When all is said and done, we believe RSA will reduce the probability of human error and improve launch capacity."
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