United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) powerful Delta IV Heavy rocket will fly for the second-to-last time early Wednesday morning (June 21), and you possibly can watch the motion live.
The Delta IV Heavy is scheduled to lift off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Wednesday at 3:29 a.m. EDT (0729 GMT), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called NROL-68.
You’ll be able to watch the launch live here at Space.com, courtesy of ULA, or directly via the corporate.
Related: Facts concerning the Delta IV Heavy
We all know little or no concerning the satellite going up on NROL-68. That is no surprise, on condition that it’s an NRO payload; the agency operates the US’ fleet of spy satellites, whose capabilities and activities are inclined to be classified.
The NROL-68 mission patch — which includes a baby dragon, its mother and the moon — offers just a few clues, scant though they’re.
“The newborn dragon illustrates the birth of a brand new satellite system, while the moon with the mother dragon silhouette represent protection of the Five Eyes community, the nation and its allies,” NRO officials wrote in a temporary mission description. (Five Eyes is an alliance involving the intelligence communities of the US, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Latest Zealand.)
“The passage along the underside, is Latin for ‘Nowhere to Hide,'” NRO officials added. “The newborn dragon could also be science fiction, but NROL-68’s impact on national security is real!”
NROL-68 can be ULA’s first mission of 2023 and the fifteenth Delta IV Heavy launch overall.
The burly rocket stands 235 feet (71.6 meters) tall and generates 2.1 million kilos of thrust at liftoff. That is rather a lot, however it’s removed from the record. For instance, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which debuted on the successful Artemis 1 moon mission last yr, produces 8.8 million kilos of thrust.
And SpaceX’s giant Starship vehicle — the most important and strongest rocket ever built — produces about 16.7 million kilos of thrust. But Starship has yet to fly a successful mission; it suffered just a few problems during its lone flight so far, an April 20 test launch, and SpaceX ordered the vehicle’s destruction high over the Gulf of Mexico.
ULA is phasing out each the Delta IV Heavy and its workhorse Atlas V rocket in favor of the brand new Vulcan Centaur, which is slated to debut later this yr. Whereas the Delta IV Heavy has just yet one more mission to go after Wednesday, nevertheless, the Atlas V will keep flying for years to return. ULA has booked missions on the veteran rocket through 2029, mostly to construct out Amazon’s Project Kuiper web constellation and send Boeing’s Starliner astronaut taxi to the International Space Station.