Air Force satellite set to launch on one of last 'single-stick' Delta IV rockets
James Dean
A rocket that has called Cape Canaveral home for more than 16 years begins its farewell tour with what promises to be a scenic blastoff near sunset Friday.
United Launch Alliance is targeting a 6:56 p.m. liftoff of a Delta IV rocket carrying a satellite that will bolster one of the military’s core space-based communications networks.
The flight will be the second-to-last by a medium-class Delta IV, which ULA is phasing out in an effort to better compete with SpaceX and other potential launchers of national security missions.
“It’s kind of bittersweet that we’re here at the end, but we look forward to the missions to come in the future and the vehicles that we’ll field,” said Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of government and commercial programs.
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On Friday morning, ULA will roll back a mobile processing tower to reveal the 218-foot, Creamsicle-colored rocket on its Launch Complex 37 pad.
An Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-68A main engine and four Northrop Grumman solid rocket motors strapped to the booster will combine to generate 1.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
“Take in the sight of this launch,” said Wentz. “It’ll light up the sky, and hopefully we’ll have a very clear night and be able to see it for a long period.”
There’s an 80 percent chance of acceptable weather during Friday’s more than two-hour launch window, with clouds a slight concern.
ULA will continue to fly the Delta IV Heavy, which features a first stage of three boosters strapped together, through 2024. The heavy-lift rocket services a special category of classified mission and potentially some NASA spacecraft, like last year’s Parker Solar Probe.
But after this mission, ULA plans to launch only one more “single-stick” Delta IV, targeting a late-July mission with a Global Positioning System satellite.
That will leave the company flying primarily its more affordable Atlas V, while at the same time developing the new Vulcan rocket that eventually is expected to take over ULA’s entire manifest.
Boeing developed the Delta IV for the Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, and it flew for the first time in November 2002. Friday’s flight will be the 28th by a medium-class version, which vary in the number of strap-on solid motors employed and the size of the nose cone on top.
When anticipated commercial launch demand failed to materialize, Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed ULA as a joint venture in December 2006, merging their Delta and Atlas fleets for mostly U.S. government missions.
Those rockets exclusively launched high-value national security missions until recently, when the Air Force re-opened competition and began awarding some contracts to SpaceX. Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman are now designing rockets that could compete for the business.
The shifting industry forced ULA to cut costs by winnowing its fleet.
“We found that maintaining these two families of launch vehicles, both the Delta and the Atlas, through this period decreased our flight rate and therefore increased our cost,” said Wentz. “That really drove (the decision to retire the Delta IV), based on the competitive industry we’re in, trying to maximize our competitiveness.”
The end for the medium-class Delta IV follows ULA’s retirement last fall of the Delta II, a longtime workhorse, after a NASA mission from California.
If all goes well Friday evening, the much larger Delta IV will place the 10th Boeing-built Wideband Global Satcom spacecraft, or WGS-10, in orbit.
The constellation enables constant drone surveillance, secure communications between high-level commanders across the globe and connections for ships in the remote Pacific Ocean.
“The WGS fleet has been an integral and critical part the (Department of Defense's) communications capability, to our nation’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, as well seven international partner nations,” said Tom Becht, director of the Military Satellite Communications Systems directorate at the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles.
Contact Dean at 321-917-4534 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/spaceteamgo.
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Launch Friday
- Rocket: United Launch Alliance Delta IV Medium+ (5,4)
- Mission: U.S. Air Force's 10th Wideband Global Satcom communications satellite (WGS-10)
- Launch Time: 6:56 p.m.
- Launch Window: to 9:05 p.m.
- Launch Complex: 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
- Weather: 80 percent "go"
Join floridatoday.com at 6 p.m. for countdown chat and updates, including streaming of ULA's launch broadcast beginning 20 minutes before liftoff.
