US: The long-awaited first satellite in the US Air Force’s GPS III program, has “successfully completed” its thermal vacuum test, wrote Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin‘s space systems on his Twitter account. Lockheed is contracted to develop eight GPS III satellites with options to build four additional satellites. The first GPS III satellite is scheduled for launch by 2017. The test is used to validate that the satellite can operate in extreme temperatures comparable to the space environment.
Source: EinNews
