[MilCom] Wallops Rocket Launch

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Large Wallops launch set for Monday

By CERI LARSON DANES, The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times Posted Tuesday, 
December 5, 2006 at 6:27 am


WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — Early Monday morning is “T minus 300.”

The countdown to liftoff of the first orbital rocket launched from NASA’s 
Wallops Flight Facility range here in more than 10 years will start at 2 a.m. 
Monday. In a best-case scenario everyone is hoping for, the five-hour countdown 
will culminate at 7 a.m. with a blast into space.

The launch window for the Dec. 11 Air Force Research Lab’s TacSat-2 satellite 
runs to 10:30 a.m., but if fog cover or other weather events preclude a 
Monday launch by then, back-up dates run through Dec. 20.

If successful, the launch will propel the 35-ton Minotaur I rocket into 
space, placing into orbit the 814-pound satellite with 11 onboard experiments 254 
miles above the Earth.

It will also signal a turning point in the regional multi-partner effort to 
make Wallops a key hub in unmanned — and potentially manned — space flight.

Also hitching a ride will be a NASA nanosatellite, the 22-pound GeneSat1, 
which will perform life science experiments.

It will be the first successful orbital launch, and the first time a payload 
has been released into orbit, from Wallops in more than two decades.

The 1995 Conestoga launch, the last orbital launch attempted and then-largest 
rocket ever launch from Wallops, failed 45 seconds after take-off and was 
destroyed, breaking up over the Atlantic.

The Air Force, NASA and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport are betting that 
won’t happen again, largely relying on Orbital Science Corp.’s rocket 
science.

The company’s Web site touts the “flight proven systems with demonstrated 
success record” of the former Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The mighty Minotaur I is no mythological monster like it’s ancient Greek 
namesake, but a very real four-stage unmanned orbital vehicle that recycles the 
first two stages from decommissioned Minuteman missiles.

All five previous Minotaur launches, from other locations, were successful.

This launch, from pad 0-B on Wallops Island, is the first time the 113-foot 
launcher — built by the regional spaceport at a cost of $3.6 million in 1998 — 
has been used.