Forging a new constellation of ultra-secure communications satellites that will ring the globe to link the president with military forces anywhere on the planet, an Atlas 5 rocket roared to space Friday to continue putting the pieces in place for the warfighter.
Counting down to blastoff at 2:42 p.m. EDT (1842 GMT), the million-pound rocket leaped from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41 and thundered eastward carrying the second Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, one of the Defense Department's most sophisticated and critical spacecraft.
"The primary purpose of the system is so our national command authorities, the senior decision leadership, have the ability to communicate in a nuclear environment," said Dave Madden, director of the Military Satellite Communications Systems Directorate at the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center.
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