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Early morning launch closes book on Delta 2 legacy spanning nearly 30 years
A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket fired away from a California military base and disappeared into an overcast cloud deck Saturday on its final flight, carrying a NASA research satellite into orbit and closing the book on a nearly 30-year legacy of launches.
[...] NASA's ICESat 2 satellite, kicking off a $1 billion mission using lasers to measure global ice sheet changes from space, deployed from the rocket's upper stage around 53 minutes after liftoff. A live video view beamed down from the Delta 2 showed the 3,340-pound (1,515-kilogram) NASA research craft flying away from the rocket against the inky black backdrop of space.
[...] While ULA's Delta 4 rocket will remain in service for several more years, the Delta 2 rocket was the last U.S. launcher flying that could trace its basic design to the dawn of the Space Age. When the first Delta 2 rocket took off on Valentine's Day 1989, ideas like navigating by smartphone and driving robots on Mars were science fiction. More than 150 launches over the last 30 years helped change all that.
The first launch of a Delta rocket occurred in May 1960, debuting a derivative of the Thor intermediate range ballistic missile capable of putting a satellite into orbit. Engineers have lengthened the Thor's original 8-foot-diameter (2.4-meter) first stage several times, expanding the Delta's propellant capacity, while adding a new upper stage engine and strap-on solid rocket boosters to haul heavier payloads into space. The Delta rocket line has been on the brink of retirement several times, perhaps most notably in the 1980s, when the U.S. government sought to transition all of its satellite launches to the space shuttle. That policy changed in the aftermath of the Challenger accident in 1986, resulting in the creation of the Delta 2 and the restart of the Delta production line.
Leftover Delta 2 rocket to go on display at Kennedy Space Center
United Launch Alliance plans to assemble leftover parts for a Delta 2 rocket display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida alongside other icons of U.S. rocketry, the company announced Saturday soon after the final Delta 2 launch.
"Just because we recently watched a Delta 2 lift off for the last time doesn't mean we have to say goodbye," said Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO. "I'm excited to announce that the final Delta 2 rocket will soon take its place in the lineup of historic rockets located in the Rocket Garden as NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida."
[...] The Delta 2 will become the second largest rocket displayed in the Rocket Garden, exceeded only by the Saturn 1B.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @04:41PM
From the final-countdown dept.