One of the largest satellites in the world will launch aboard America’s biggest operational booster Thursday, riding that power to a listening post 22,300 miles above the planet for its clandestine eavesdropping mission, all indications suggest.
Get a preview of Thursday’s United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket flight in these video highlights packages from previous missions by the big booster for NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office from Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
After tropical weather passes through Florida to start the week, meteorologists say there is a 40 percent chance of acceptable conditions for the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket to fly Thursday from Cape Canaveral with a reconnaissance satellite payload for the U.S. government.
A new launch date has been established — June 9 — for the Delta 4-Heavy rocket to carry a classified satellite into space for U.S. national security needs.
Shielded from view within the protective rocket nose cone, a covert surveillance satellite has been mounted atop a Delta 4-Heavy rocket for launch June 4.
Successfully put through its countdown paces in a critical pre-flight test Thursday, America’s largest rocket currently in service moved closer to a June launch for the U.S. intelligence community.
Rolling toward a mid-May deployment of a clandestine spy satellite, United Launch Alliance’s triple-body Delta 4-Heavy rocket moved from its Cape Canaveral assembly building to pad 37B yesterday.
Some of America’s most critical surveillance satellites, final members of other spacecraft series and a probe that will touch an asteroid are among 15 rocket flights planned by United Launch Alliance in 2016.
The covert follow-on satellite program that will serve as a replacement to the nation’s surveillance “eyes” from space begins launching in 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.