On April 26 (11:46 pm Kyiv time), the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy super-heavy missile is scheduled to be launched from the SLC-6 site at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The carrier is supposed to launch a classified US military satellite into an intermediate orbit. This is the 13th launch of a Heavy configuration rocket.
A few seconds before the rocket leaves the ground, liquid hydrogen is injected into the engine system to cool them, which flares up. After that, oxygen is supplied and the thrust is built up. When the “unacidified” O burns2 hydrogen, from the side it seems as if there was an accident and the rocket is about to explode. This is a feature of the Delta IV Heavy.
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The broadcast will end immediately after “shooting” the halves of the head fairing. There is no timeline after that: everything is secret.
What payload in the NROL-82 mission is unknown. Space enthusiasts speculate that there is a 19-ton KH-11 (18) Kennen reconnaissance satellite from Lockheed Martin, which can be put into a slightly elliptical orbit of 260 × 1000 km. The previous KH-11 (17) was launched into an unusual orbit of 74 °; this suggests that the device may have been a variant of the secret Misty satellite.
It is assumed that the optics of these satellites with a main mirror up to 2.4 m in diameter allows them to obtain images of the Earth’s surface up to ~ 15 cm per pixel.
Customer – US National Intelligence Agency and Space Force.
ROCKET… Delta IV Heavy is a two-stage single-use missile from Boeing (operator – United Launch Alliance), the heaviest in the Delta family. Its single launch costs taxpayers no less than $ 400 million. It has the second largest payload deployed among all operated rockets in the world after SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. The height of this variation of the launch vehicle is about 71 m, and its launch mass at full load is up to 733 tons. It carries almost 1.8 million liters of liquid hydrogen (fuel) and liquid oxygen (oxidizer). On the first stage – RS-68A engines, on the second – RL-10B-2.
See also: Another military satellite burned down in Russia – RosSMI
Two rocket boosters are mounted on the sides of the central 41-meter sustainer stage, which is 5.1 m in diameter. The Delta IV Heavy has an almost 14-meter second stage and an elongated head fairing over 19 m long.
In this version, the carrier is capable of throwing up to 28.4 tons of cargo onto the circular low near-Earth (altitude ~ 200 km, inclination 28.7 °), up to 26 tons – onto the circular ISS (~ 407 km, 51.6 °), up to 23, 6 t – for a circular low near-Earth (~ 200 km, 90 °), up to 14.2 t – for an elliptical geosynchronous transitional (35 786 × 185 km, 27 °) and up to 6.6 t – for a geosynchronous circular (35 786 km , 0 °).
So far, the weather conditions are such that the probability of starting today is ~ 40%.
It’s time for #ULARocketTalk! ULA’s Caroline Kirk, systems engineer, explains the importance of the Mobile Assembly Shelter (MAS) located at SLC-6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA ahead of the #DeltaIVHeavy # NROL82 launch for the @NatReconOfc. pic.twitter.com/KROiu12auW
– ULA (@ulalaunch) April 25, 2021
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