Skip to footer

World's most powerful rocket launches secret US satellite

The second classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office to launch in nine days blasted off with the most powerful liquid hydrogen rocket engines ever built.  The spy agency plans a third launch in August. 

|
ULA
A ULA Delta 4 Heavy Rocket launches the NROL-15 spy satellite July 29 from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

A new spy satellite launched into orbit on a secret mission for the U.S. military Friday (June 29), roaring spaceward atop the world's most powerful rocket in use today.

The NROL-15 reconnaissance satellite blasted off from a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:15 a.m. EDT (1315 GMT) to begin its classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. It rode a towering Delta 4-Heavy booster equipped with new RS-68A first stage engines — the most powerful liquid hydrogen rocket engines ever built, according to their manufactures.

Built by Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, the new RS-68A engines are each capable of generating 702,000 pounds of thrust and are more efficient than a previous design, the rocket engine builders said, adding that the engine generates 36,000 more pounds of thrust than its predecessor. Three of the new rocket engines made their space launch debut in Friday's Delta 4-Heavy flight by rocket provider United Launch Alliance.

"And the RS-68A engines roar to life!" a ULA launch commentator said during liftoff. "The NRO systems continue to ensure vigilance from above." [Photos: Secret Spy Satellite NROL-15 Blasts Off]

The Delta 4-Heavy rocket is currently the largest and most powerful rocket in service. The booster features three core rocket boosters and is topped with a second stage to place payloads into orbit. It is 235 feet tall (72 meters) and can carry payloads of up to 24 tons into low-Earth orbit and 11 tons to geosynchronous orbits.

Friday's launch came after several delays for the Delta 4-Heavy. The rocket was initially slated to blast off on Thursday, but ULA and Air Force officials pushed the launch back 24 hours due to weather delays from Tropical Storm Debby.

During today's liftoff, a fuel valve problem prompted launch controllers to repeatedly hold the countdown. But the glitch was ultimately resolved, clearing the booster for flight.

The successful launch marked the second space mission in nine days by ULA to orbit a classified payload for the U.S. military. The company, a joint launch services endeavor by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, launched the NROL-38 spy satellite into orbit just last week on June 20.

"Phew! 2 launches in 9 days. Who says things slow down in summer!" ULA officials wrote in a Twitter post just after liftoff.

ULA officials broadcast the secret NROL-15 satellite's launch live, but cut the feed off four minutes after liftoff at the request of NRO officials, a typical action for U.S. reconnaissance satellite launches.  

The next ULA launch will be an Atlas 5 rocket slated to loft another NRO spy satellite into orbit in August. That mission is expected to launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Station in California.

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik.  We're also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to World's most powerful rocket launches secret US satellite
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0629/World-s-most-powerful-rocket-launches-secret-US-satellite
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe