Photos: Gantry rollback from Delta 2

There’s a new launch being added to Vandenberg Air Force Base’s schedules — another Delta 4 rocket flight for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The Delta 2 rocket and the SMAP spacecraft passed the Flight Readiness Review today that assessed the progress of work and granted approval to proceed with loading the storable hypergolics into the second stage.

One-half of the instrument payload aboard NASA’s $916 million Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite has failed after collecting just two months of data, NASA announced Wednesday after weeks of troubleshooting turned up no progress in recovering the sensor.