Largest rocket ever launched from the west coast puts new spy satellite in orbit

[MilesColtrane]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1349183/Delta-IV-Heavy-Launch-Vehicle-Largest-rocket-launched-U-S-West-Coast-lifts-off.html

The Delta Heavy IV isn't as big and powerful as the Saturn V, but impressive in flight none the less.



Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEOYKVTsDrQ

[leveymg]

1. Just an optical illusion caused by a passenger jet contrail. ;-)

[leveymg]

4. Or, launched into a nonequitorial geostationary orbit at @ 40oNorth and 127oEast?

Let's say, right over North Korea. Wouldn't a launch from Vandenberg be a lot easier to place a satellite in that sort of orbit?

[county worker]

7. The reason they use Vandenberg is to put satellites into polar orbit.

Vandenberg sticks out into the ocean and the rockets never go over the inhabited areas. If they start to go off track they destroy them.

[leveymg]

8. Polar orbit (Low Earth Orbit) particularly useful for remote sensing satellites. Two would give

near 24-hour coverage over a particular spot at 40oN/127oE. What did I say earlier (only half-jokingly) about something being mistaken for contrails at dusk a couple months ago?

According to the article, Vandenberg hasn't been used for a heavy launch since 2006. I wonder why now?

[underseasurveyor]

9. You're right, there's nothing to see here. Believe what we tell you....

And not your own eyes.

I saw that from the Palos Verdes penn. Passenger jet contrail my ass.

[Xenotime]

2. Hopefully Obama will use it to spy on the Tea Baggers.

[Iggo]

3. They launch rockets out here?

I hadn't heard!

[shireen]

5. love rocket launches!

They always take my breath away. WOW!

Apparently, it's to replace an imaging satellite. Probably the KH11. It's looks like the Hubble, except it's pointed at Earth. :D

We've used Hubble to take images of the Earth; we call them Earthflats. But Hubble is not designed to observe features on Earth so we just get streaky blurred-out cloud images. The most uniformly-illuminated ones -- many of them -- are combined together to create what's known as a flat field image. It's an image of constant brightness that's used to calibrate the sensitivity of the CCD detectors in the Hubble cameras (ACS and WFC3).

[county worker]

6. I watched it yesterday. I live next to Vandenberg AFB but work 70 miles away.

I was not home but at work and sill I could see it clearly going up into the sky.

The strange thing about watching rocket launch is the lack of the Doppler effect.