Video credit: United Launch Alliance
This video released by United Launch Alliance shows the Delta 4-Heavy rocket’s predawn liftoff Aug. 12 from the perspective of a downward-facing camera, capturing dazzling views of the fiery takeoff and the dramatic separation of the launcher’s two hydrogen-fueled boosters.
The 233-foot-tall (71-meter) Delta 4-Heavy rocket took off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 37B launch pad at 3:31 a.m. EDT (0731 GMT) on Aug. 12. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, departing from Earth on a mission to fly closer to the sun than any mission before, was the passenger on the 10th flight of ULA’s heaviest launcher.
United Launch Alliance released this video on YouTube a few days after liftoff, showing an interrupted nearly six-minute view from a rocket-mounted camera as the Delta 4-Heavy climbed away from Florida’s Space Coast. The replay shows the shutdown and separation of the rocket’s two strap-on boosters, each powered by a hydrogen-fueled RS-68A main engine, just shy of the flight’s four-minute mark.
The Delta 4-Heavy’s center core continued firing its own RS-68A engine until around five-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, followed by stage separation and the first ignition of the second stage’s RL10 engine.
Live flight commentary from ULA systems engineer Patrick Moore was added to the rocketcam replay.
Read our full story for details on the launch.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
