Here we have the launch highlights video for the final Delta II launch – ICESat-2. This early morning flight was a beautiful end to the nearly 30 year Delta II program and was, as expected, a complete success. This marked the 100th successful Delta II flight in a row, also setting a world record for […]
It’s mission complete for the Delta II rocket – today at 6:01 A.M. Pacific Time the final Delta II booster launched on the last mission of the program to deliver ICESat-2 into a polar orbit to begin its mission of studying the Earth’s cryosphere. This launch marks the 155th Delta II launch, the 100th successful […]
At 6:01 A.M. Pacific Time the final Delta II rocket launched from LC-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying ICESat-2 and a small compliment of CubeSats into orbit. This mission is still underway – as I write these words we’re only 30 minutes into the mission, in a coast phase between burns of the second […]
As is standard fare for a United Launch Alliance flight we have here the ICESat-2 mission profile video. What isn’t standard fare is that this is a Delta II launch. Not just any Delta II launch, but the final flight of the Delta II booster. Yes. That’s it. This will mark flight 155, and the […]
You didn’t think we would have a high profile Atlas V launch without me sharing the launch highlights video, did you? Of course not. While there wasn’t too much to see with this mornings launch, it still put on quite a show for what we could see, especially some footage taken above the clouds from […]
It’s been a good long while since I’ve covered a recent rocket launch, but what better of a launch to come back with than the next Mars mission by NASA – InSight, a probe which will land on and study the interior surface of Mars! It’s going to be an amazing mission, to be sure, […]
Here we have the launch highlights video for the United Launch Alliance Delta IV launch of NROL-47. As is standard for these launch highlights videos, it covers the usual pre-launch preparations, and contains many views of the vehicle which were not shown during the actual launch live stream. It includes some quite beautiful views of […]
After several delays, a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying the NROL-47 satellite into a polar orbit. Just what is NROL-47? No one outside of the National Reconnaissance Office really knows for sure. Of course, we know it was inserted into a polar orbit of some type, given […]
I’m glad I stayed up for this one – early this morning, 1:47 Pacific Time (3:47 Central Time for me) marked the launch of the NASA / NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System 1, or JPSS-1, weather satellite. As the name implies, JPSS-1 is the first of a new set of polar orbiting weather satellites which […]
Yesterday, October 31st, marked the return to flight of the Taurus booster after having been upgraded and renamed the Minotaur-C. Minotaur-C is one of those rather unique boosters that a vast majority of people know nothing about. In the original Taurus designation, it made 9 flights between 1994 and 2011, 3 of those resulting in […]
Early this morning a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying 10 new satellites for the Iridium NEXT communications network. They were released about an hour after launch once they were in their proper positions to function in the “constellation” of satellites that will make up the Iridium NEXT […]
As always, United Launch Alliance has produced a launch highlights clip for their most recent launch, NROL-42. This classified military payload was launched via an Atlas V booster from Vandeberg Air Force Base in California. The launch highlights clip follows the traditional format of showing the preparation of the booster, rollback of the service towers, […]
Another United States military payload launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning – NROL-42. What is it? A classified reconnaissance satellite. What launched it? An Atlas V booster – in this case, the Atlas 541 configuration using 4 solid rocket motors. Why am I typing this post like this? Because there isn’t much to […]
Getting back to the grind, we might as well start with this video, uploaded today , which is a digital conversion of a 1966 film about the process of filming and photographing rocket launches at Vandernberg Air Force Base. Launches from VAFB were more common than launches from the Eastern Test Range and Cape Canaveral […]
Seems like every few months the National Reconnaissance Office is sending another reconnaissance satellite into orbit – yesterday the payload was NROL-79, launched into a polar orbit from Vandeberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V booster in the standard 401 configuration. It was a somewhat early morning launch of a naval reconnaissance satellite. The […]