United Launch Alliance Successfully Launches NROL-82 Mission to Support National Security
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., April 26, 2021 (ULA PR) – A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle carrying the NROL-82 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) lifted off from Space Launch Complex-6 on April 26 at 1:47 p.m. PDT. To date ULA has launched 143 times with 100 percent mission success.
“The unmatched power of the Delta IV Heavy again demonstrated its role as the nation’s proven heavy lift vehicle precisely delivering this critical NRO asset to its intended orbit,” said Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of Government and Commercial Programs. “We are honored to support National Security space and thank our mission partners for their continued trust and teamwork.”
The Delta IV Heavy is recognized for delivering high-priority missions for the U.S. Space Force, NRO and NASA. The vehicle also launched NASA’s Orion capsule on its first orbital test flight and sent the Parker Solar Probe on its journey to unlock the mysteries of the sun.
This was the 42nd launch of the Delta IV rocket, the 13th in the Heavy configuration and ULA’s 31st launch with the NRO.
This Delta IV Heavy was comprised of three common core boosters each powered by an Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR) RS-68A liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine, producing a combined total of more than 2.1 million pounds of thrust. The second stage was powered by an AR RL10B-2 liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine.
ULA’s next launch is the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) GEO Flight 5 mission for the U.S. Space Force, scheduled for May 17, 2021, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
With more than a century of combined heritage, ULA is the nation’s most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 140 missions to orbit that aid meteorologists in tracking severe weather, unlock the mysteries of our solar system, provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, deliver cutting-edge commercial services and enable GPS navigation.
For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com, or call the ULA Launch Hotline at 1-877-ULA-4321 (852-4321).
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11 responses to “United Launch Alliance Successfully Launches NROL-82 Mission to Support National Security”
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“To date ULA has launched 143 times with 100 percent mission success.”
To date spacex has blown up several times and has set space exploration back at least a decade by making the Moon verboten, dragging it’s feet providing the promised cheap ride to the space station to nowhere, and finally flying humans (after first launching satellites on the taxpayer dime) with a fundamentally unsafe design in the toxic dragon.
NewSpace delenda est
“by making the Moon verboten”
When you had a bad idea and stick with it well after the expiration date has passed. We have a ripe one here.
You are the rotten apple- no doubt about that. The worms are in your brain.
And yet, we stopped going to the Moon in the 1970’s, when no one ever heard of Elon Musk…
And yet, evidence for ice on the Moon should have pointed the space agency back at the Moon in 2010. Instead a certain “connected” entrepreneur with his hobby rocket that was useless for any lunar mission decided his company, and NASA, was not going there. Read the speech…we had already “been there.”
https://www.nasa.gov/news/m…
The speech in question was given by Barack Obama, not Elon Musk. Or is it your contention that Obama was Elon Musk’s ventriloquist’s dummy? Was Musk supposed to have been “connected” to Obama or was it the other way around? And how did Musk do all this back in 2010 when he was a relative pauper and nobody compared to now?
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
In Gary’s conspiracy addled brain that doesn’t matter. He views Elon Musk as the anti-christ who is secretly controlling the New World Order and governments around the world.
Your “addled brain” is clearly concerned with one thing- harassing the F out of me.
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Jul 4, 2020
Please take a moment to report accounts clearly engaged in harassment. It is the only way to maintain public discourse.
Congratulations!
That was a colorful and precision launch. I will miss the Delta IV Heavy. Only three launches left.