Early Thursday morning (June 22), United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) powerful Delta IV Heavy rocket took to the skies for the penultimate time. Depending on the amount of cloud cover, residents and visitors of the state of Florida who live as far away as Jacksonville and Tampa could witness the United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket as it soars into the sky from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The Delta IV Heavy Rocket lifted Off From Cape Canaveral
On Thursday at 5:18 a.m. EDT (0918 GMT), the Delta IV Heavy rocketed out from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on a mission for the United States National Reconnaissance Office, as reported by Space.com.
At the NRO’s request, ULA terminated the livestream 6 minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff. Seven hours after the launch, the military acknowledged its success.
“We had another successful launch for the NRO today,” U.S. Space Force Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, program executive officer for U.S. Space System Command’s Assured Access to Space, said in an email statement.
“The payload we’ve put into space today adds to the unique capability the NRO provides to keep us safe and out in front of the pacing challenges posed by our nation’s competitors,” Purdy said.
The NROL-68 satellite is largely a mystery to us. Given that it is a payload from the National Reconnaissance Office, which controls the United States’ fleet of surveillance satellites, this is to be expected.
Although cryptic, the NROL-68 mission patch depicting a young dragon, its mother, and the moon, may provide some insight.
According to the NRO’s brief mission description, “the baby dragon illustrates the birth of a new satellite system,” while the moon and the silhouette of the mother dragon stand for protecting the Five Eyes community, the nation, and its friends.
“The passage along the bottom, Nusquam Celare, is Latin for ‘Nowhere to Hide,'” NRO officials added. “The baby dragon may be science fiction, but NROL-68’s impact on national security is real!”
You can also read some of the exciting volcano story we’ve covered:
The NROL-68 launch was the first mission for ULA in 2023 and the 15th launch using the Delta IV Heavy.
The hefty rocket has a launch thrust of 2.1 million pounds and a height of 235 feet (71.6 meters). That’s a lot, to be sure, but it’s not the highest ever. Last year’s successful Artemis 1 moon mission used NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which generates 8.8 million pounds of power.
The massive Starship spacecraft from SpaceX generates around 16.7 million pounds of thrust, making it the most powerful rocket ever built. However, Starship has not yet completed a mission successfully; on April 20 SpaceX ordered the destruction of the vehicle high above the Gulf of Mexico after a few issues arose during the test launch.
Launching later this year, the Vulcan Centaur will replace both the Delta IV Heavy and ULA’s workhorse Atlas V rocket. However, the Atlas V will continue flying for years to come, while the Delta IV Heavy will only fly one more mission after Thursday.
Through 2029, ULA has scheduled flights on the seasoned rocket, mostly to launch components of Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband constellation and Boeing’s Starliner astronaut taxi to the International Space Station. Jenny Hautmann posted an official tweet which you can check below.
Early Thursday morning, SpaceX launched 47 of its Starlink broadband satellites into orbit, and NROL-68 was the second part of a spaceflight doubleheader.
Wednesday, June 21 had been planned as the launch day for NROL-68, but a fault with a ground-system valve necessitated a one-day postponement.
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