[Launch Alert] Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule
Launch Alert
launch-alert at mailman.qth.net
Wed Feb 1 22:47:25 EST 2012
LAUNCH ALERT
Brian Webb
Ventura County, California
launch-alert-editor at earthlink.net
www.spacearchive.info
2012 February 1 (Wednesday) 19:24 PST
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VANDENBERG AFB LAUNCH SCHEDULE
As of 2012 February 1
Launch
Time/Window
Date (PST/PDT) Vehicle Pad/Silo
-------- ----------------- ------------- --------
FEB 25 To be announced Minuteman III ---
The vehicle will probably send an unarmed warhead on a ballistic
trajectory to the central Pacific. The Defense Department will release
the launch window and other details a few days in advance
MAR 29 To be announced Delta IV SLC-6
Vehicle will launch the classified NROL-25 payload for the U.S.
National Reconnaissance Office
AUG To be announced Atlas V SLC-3E
Vehicle will launch the classified NROL-36 payload for the U.S.
National Reconnaissance Office
DEC 1 To be announced Pegasus XL N/A
Vehicle will be air-dropped from an L-1011 jumbo jet flying offshore.
The aircraft will be staged from Vandenberg AFB.
2012 To be announced Falcon 9 SLC-4E
Vehicle will launch a payload for MDA Corp. (Canada)
2012 To be announced Falcon Heavy SLC-4E
Falcon Heavy demonstration flight
The above schedule is a composite of unclassified information
approved for public release from government, industry, and other
sources. It represents the Editor's best effort to produce a schedule,
but may disagree with other sources. Details on military launches are
withheld until they are approved for public release. For official
information regarding Vandenberg AFB activities, go to
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil.
All launch dates and times are given in Pacific Time using a 24-hour
format similar to military time (midnight = 00:00, 1:00 p.m. = 13:00,
11:00 p.m. = 23:00, etc.).
The dates and times in this schedule may not agree with those on other
online launch schedules, including the official Vandenberg AFB
schedule because different sources were used, the information was
interpreted differently, and the schedules were updated at different
times.
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DEFENSE WEATHER SATELLITE SYSTEM STOPS WORK
Space & Missile Systems Center Media Release
2012 January 24
LOS ANGELES AIR FORCE BASE, El Segundo, Calif. - The U.S. Air Force
has stopped work on the Defense Weather Satellite System to implement
the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act and FY12 Consolidated
Appropriations Act.
The Defense Weather Satellite System was created out of the Executive
Office of the President restructure of the National Polar-orbiting
Operational Environmental Satellite System program into separate civil
and military space programs in February of 2010.
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems is the prime contractor for the
military DWSS program and is responsible for developing the satellite
including the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite provided by a
subcontract with Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.
Today the Air Force Defense Meteorological System Program
constellation of satellites continues to provide high-quality and
timely weather data to forecasters with two more satellites yet to be
launched.
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NASA'S NUSTAR SHIPS TO VANDENBERG AHEAD OF MARCH 14 LAUNCH
NASA News Release
2012 January 25
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR,
shipped to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Tuesday to be mated
to its Pegasus launch vehicle. The observatory will detect X-rays
from objects ranging from our sun to giant black holes billions of
light-years away. It is scheduled to launch March 14 from an aircraft
operating out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
"The NuSTAR mission is unique because it will be the first NASA
mission to focus X-rays in the high-energy range, creating the most
detailed images ever taken in this slice of the electromagnetic
spectrum," said Fiona Harrison, the mission's principal investigator
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
The observatory shipped from Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles,
Va., where the spacecraft and science instrument were integrated. It
is scheduled to arrive at Vandenberg on Jan. 27, where it will be
mated to the Pegasus, also built by Orbital, on Feb. 17.
The mission will be launched from the L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft,
which will take off near the equator from Kwajalein Atoll in the
Pacific. NuSTAR and its Pegasus will fly from Vandenberg to Kwajalein
attached to the underside of the L-1011, and are scheduled to arrive
on March 7.
On launch day, after the airplane arrives at the planned drop site
over the ocean, the Pegaus will drop from the L-1011 and carry NuSTAR
to an orbit around Earth.
"NuSTAR is an engineering achievement, incorporating state-of-the-art
high-energy X-ray mirrors and detectors that will enable years of
astronomical discovery," said Yunjin Kim, the mission's project
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena.
NuSTAR's advanced telescope consists of two sets of 133 concentric
shells of mirrors, which were shaped from flexible-glass similar to
that found in laptop screens. Because X-rays require large focusing
distances, or focal lengths, the telescope has a lengthy 10-meter
(33-foot) mast, which will unfold a week after launch.
These and other advances in technology will enable NuSTAR to explore
the cosmic world of high-energy X-rays with much improved sensitivity
and resolution over previous missions. During its two-year primary
mission, NuSTAR will map the celestial sky in X-rays, surveying black
holes, mapping supernova remnants, and studying particle jets
travelling away from black holes near the speed of light.
NuSTAR also will probe the sun, looking for microflares theorized to
be on the surface that could explain how the sun's million-degree
corona, or atmosphere, is heated. It even will test a theory of dark
matter, the mysterious substance making up about one-quarter of our
universe, by searching the sun for evidence of a hypothesized dark
matter particle.
"NuSTAR will provide an unprecedented capability to discover and study
some of the most exotic objects in the universe, from the corpses of
exploded stars in the Milky Way to supermassive black holes residing
in the hearts of distant galaxies," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR
program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
NuSTAR is a small-explorer mission managed by JPL for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences
Corporation. Its instrument was built by a consortium including
Caltech, JPL, Columbia University, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md., the Danish Technical University, the University of
California, Berkeley, and ATK-Goleta. NuSTAR will be operated by U.C.
Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial
ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. NASA's Explorer Program is
managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.
For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/nustar
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