A night launch of this super-flamey 3x rocket should be pretty spectacular! On track for a 2:12 a.m. EDT (0612 GMT) launch. Watch the base of the rocket a few seconds before liftoff... Live stream up at 1:50am Eastern,
My wife and I live on north Merritt Island, FL, just a few miles south of the Kennedy Space Center. It's hard to express how beautiful and awe inspiring every launch is. We're going to get to watch (if everything goes as planned) 3 launches over the next 4 days. It's hard to describe...
Chris B - NSF @NASASpaceflight ULA: The NROL-44 mission was scrubbed due to an issue with a critical ground pneumatics control system. "The team needs additional time to evaluate and resolve the issue." Next attempt: Friday, 02:08 EDT. This is Delta IV-H's first mission in 19 months.
Wow, you don’t see that happen very often. Engine ignition and then almost instant shutdown, I would guess a small fraction of a second away from releasing the launch mount clamps?
Rocketlab is also doing a launch tomorrow: Their webcast isn't up yet but here is Tim Dodd'd webcast:
ULA described the last few seconds of the Delta IV Heavy launch sequence quite well on their webcast (goes well with the extra colour provided by Scott), at 2:39
Also, Scott’s video goes into details about the classified satellite, including its 100m/330foot dish...
Tough to call the exact timing, but yeah pretty short--looks like there's 2 seconds between full thrust and hold down release. Here's the flow: Not sure if coincidental or not, but Vulcain also has a ~7 second startup routine.
This isn’t a non-Space X video, but I don’t know another thread to post this in and there is so little information that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to start a new thread. The “reusable” spacecraft that China recently launched has been successfully recovered according to the Chinese government. No specific information about the spacecraft has been released. But it is interesting that China is launching something that is “reusable” even though we don’t know what it is. China lands its first reusable spacecraft as state media hails it an 'important breakthrough'
More words here (but not too much more detail). Chinese reusable experimental spacecraft releases object before returning to Earth - SpaceNews It’s most likely a dragon-ey kind of thing.
Scrubbed again with 7 seconds to go, It frees up the range for seven days. So the two launches from SpaceX get to go forward without interference from ULA.