United Launch Alliance (ULA) is once again preparing to launch the NROL-44 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. After the first attempt ended with a scrub and the second resulted in a pad abort at T-3 seconds in August, ULA stood down for about a month to fix the issue before a swing arm retract issue moved the mission to 29 September at 00:02 EDT (04:02 UTC). The mission, designated NRO Launch 44 (NROL-44), will mark the first Delta IV mission since the Medium+ variant of the rocket retired in August 2019 and the first Delta IV Heavy since January 2019. […]
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United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket will make its first launch in over 19 months Thursday, carrying out a clandestine mission to deploy a surveillance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. Liftoff is expected between 02:12 and 06:16 Eastern Daylight Time (06:12-10:12 UTC), from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Thursday’s mission, designated NRO Launch 44 (NROL-44), marks the first Delta IV mission since the Medium+ variant of the rocket was retired in August 2019 and the first Delta IV Heavy since January 2019. Although ULA is phasing out the Delta IV in favour of its Vulcan rocket, […]
Development and flight qualification for United Launch Alliance’s new rocket, Vulcan, remains on track and on schedule (with margin) to make its debut flights next year, as do all ground support facilities and flight software elements for the heavy-lift vehicle. Vulcan’s first two flights, certification missions to clear the rocket to fly category A/B national security payloads for the U.S. Space Force, will loft Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lander outward to the Moon and then Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spacecraft on its demonstration mission for NASA to become the third U.S. cargo vehicle for Station operations. Ground elements: “It’s coming up on six […]
United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Delta IV Heavy rocket has received its clandestine payload for the upcoming NROL-44 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office as teams continue launch preparations on SLC-37B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. The mission is set to launch at the end of August and comes as ULA wins 60% of the National Security Space Launch award from the U.S. Space Force with SpaceX winning the remaining 40% of the missions. NROL-44 progress: The first Delta IV Heavy mission from Florida since August 2018 is in the final stages of preparation for launch, with ULA and […]
United Launch Alliance has announced their Vulcan rocket is progressing towards its maiden launch as soon as early-2021. While an exact launch target isn’t known yet, the mission will use a newly-built Launch Umbilical Tower while sharing Atlas V’s Vertical Integration Facility and SLC-41 launch pad in Florida. When first announced in 2014 as a “new booster,” ULA stated that Vulcan’s first flight was targeting 2019. Given an early-2021 target in mid-2020, that is the rocket-world equivalent of “remarkably on-time”. Vulcan’s history: The need for Vulcan began in 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in what was internationally considered an […]
The next Atlas V to launch a mission to Mars is at the launch site, as United Launch Alliance (ULA) moved through “Launch Vehicle on Stand (LVOS)” operations for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. The preparations are being conducted at Space Launch Complex-41 or SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS). The pad flow has begun not long after the rocket had arrived in Florida. The booster arrived into the Cape from Decatur, Alabama on May 18 on an Antonov-124, flown by Volga-Dnepr Airlines. Usually, ULA’s transport ship, called the R/S RocketShip – launched in 1999 and was previously known as […]
The United States Air Force’s X-37B spaceplane will begin its sixth mission with launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket Saturday. Atlas is due to lift off from Cape Canaveral during a two-hour, 29-minute window that opens at 08:24 EDT (12:24 UTC), with deployment of the X-37B into low Earth orbit likely to occur about twenty minutes later. Built by Boeing, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) is a recoverable, reusable, platform that can operate in low Earth orbit for months or years at a time. The spacecraft facilitates on-orbit research and experiments, as well as other military applications. […]
United Launch Alliance is proceeding smoothly through the final round of preflight elements of the Atlas V rocket tasked with launching the U.S. Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane on its sixth mission next week. The Atlas V 501 rocket is slated to lift off from SLC-41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on Saturday, 16 May. The precise launch time this day has not yet been released by United Launch Alliance or the U.S. Space Force. Overall, everything is going quite smoothly with the Atlas V’s flow toward its launch next weekend. Stacking of the Atlas V booster and the […]