After many years of delays and a series of false-starts over the past few months, on the morning of June 5th 2024 the Boeing Starliner spacecraft successfully carried a crew of two – Barry Willmore and Sunita Williams, into orbit and onto a successful docking with the International Space Station on what is a currently […]
I’m a little late on this one, but here we have the launch highlights video for the AEHF-4 launch from earlier this week. It was all in all another wonderful Atlas V launch. Yep. This video has the usual clips of the assembly and rollout of the Atlas V followed by some nice shots of […]
The United States Air Force AEHF4 payload was successfully launched on time this morning at 12:15AM Eastern from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on an Atlas V rocket. This launch marks the 131st mission for United Launch Alliance and their 50th launch for the Air Force. It’s the 79th Atlas V rocket launch and the […]
We’ve got another awesome Atlas V launch tonight; this time an Atlas 551 configuration, one of the most powerful variations available of the Atlas V with 5 solid rocket boosters, will be launching the fourth satellite in the Advanced Extremely High Frequency series for the U.S. Air Force. This is a slightly different launch, in that […]
You didn’t think we would have a high profile Atlas V launch without me sharing the launch highlights video, did you? Of course not. While there wasn’t too much to see with this mornings launch, it still put on quite a show for what we could see, especially some footage taken above the clouds from […]
NASA’s InSight Mars lander successfully launched this morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. As expected, the weather was quite a mess – very foggy – and once the Atlas V RD-180 engine ignited there wasn’t too much more than steam and an orange glow to be seen in the launch video. Of course, […]
It’s been a good long while since I’ve covered a recent rocket launch, but what better of a launch to come back with than the next Mars mission by NASA – InSight, a probe which will land on and study the interior surface of Mars! It’s going to be an amazing mission, to be sure, […]
Here we have, as always, the launch highlights from last weeks Atlas V SBIRS launch. It was an early evening launch with spectacular views, as is usually the case for an Atlas V launch. This particular clip is interesting to me in that this being Launch Complex 41, it’s the same one that Cassini, and […]
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V lifted off yesterday from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the 4th Geostationary Satellite in the Space-Based Infrared System, a collection of specialty satellites operated by the United States Air Force designed to assist the United States military in situational awareness in the battlefield, especially […]
Here’s one I should have gotten to back in December but couldn’t get to for, well, reasons. This is a launch highlights compilation for year 2017 produced by United Launch Alliance, showing of the past years launches of 1 Delta IV booster, 6 Atlas V boosters, and the second to last Delta II launch ever. […]
As always, United Launch Alliance has produced a launch highlights clip for their most recent launch, NROL-42. This classified military payload was launched via an Atlas V booster from Vandeberg Air Force Base in California. The launch highlights clip follows the traditional format of showing the preparation of the booster, rollback of the service towers, […]
Another United States military payload launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base this morning – NROL-42. What is it? A classified reconnaissance satellite. What launched it? An Atlas V booster – in this case, the Atlas 541 configuration using 4 solid rocket motors. Why am I typing this post like this? Because there isn’t much to […]
Now for something actually somewhat exciting to me, the onboard footage of the Atlas V TDRS-M launch from a few days ago. This is exactly what it sounds like, the view from the booster of the launch, including staging, ignition of the Centaur stage RL-10 engine, and the payload deployment. It’s straightforward, just the way […]
I’m almost a week late on this one, but it’s still worth covering: The third, and final of the 3 Third-Generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, known as TDRS, was successfully launched on Friday, August 18th, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 41. The TDRS satellite system is used for high-bandwith data and […]
Let’s deviate away from SpaceX for a moment – let’s talk about United Launch Alliance. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security. Lockheed and Boeing have been involved in rocketry since the the 1950’s, having combined between them over a century of […]