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Delta 4 Rocket Successfully Lofts Clandestine NRO Satellite Into Orbit

posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday January 16 2018, @08:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the satellites-flying-backwards dept.

Fnord666 writes:

What caught my eye initially was the unusual track of the flight path.

A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket climbed into orbit Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a top secret spy satellite, adding a new set of eyes in the sky for the U.S. government's intelligence community and nudging part of the Delta 4 family closer to retirement.

The 217-foot-tall (66-meter) Delta 4 rocket lifted off at 2:11 p.m. PST (5:11 p.m. EST; 2211 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg on the power of an Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-68A main engine and two Orbital ATK-built solid rocket boosters.

[...] ULA confirmed the flight's successful outcome in a press release around two hours after liftoff.

[...] "It's a classified payload for the NRO," Varghese said in a pre-launch interview. "We can't go into the details of what the payload does, but it's a national security priority, and it's mission will ensure that the warfighters across the globe have the appropriate intel that they need to be able to support operations."

Codenamed NROL-47, the satellite lofted Friday will likely join the NRO's fleet of orbiting radar reconnaissance stations.

The Delta 4's trajectory toward the southwest suggested it was bound for an unusual high-inclination retrograde orbit that would allow the rocket's top secret payload to travel in the opposite direction of Earth's rotation.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/01/13/delta-4-rocket-successfully-lofts-clandestine-nro-satellite-into-orbit/

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:27PM (4 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:27PM (#623333) Homepage Journal

    I just built the installer for our internal QA to test.

    It's looking real good so I don't forsee any problems with testing by my client's customers.

    (My client is a fabless semiconductor firm. Their customers manufacture finished products for end-users.)

    When all the customers are happy with my product then I get paid.

    I'm going to buy a car.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:43PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @10:43PM (#623338)

    How about a refill on the meds instead of a car?