Cygnus OA-6: What’s onboard?

Standing on a seaside launch pad overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a Minotaur-C rocket is set for launch Tuesday from California’s Central Coast with 10 Earth observation satellites manufactured in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Likened to raising a cellular tower 22,300 miles high, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will put the Navy’s fourth mobile communications satellite into space to expands the rugged smartphone system to global coverage.

The first 10 satellites for Iridium’s next-generation mobile voice and data relay network have been fueled, joined with their deployment module and encapsulated inside the clamshell-like nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster for launch as soon as next week from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.