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The top secret intelligence-gathering charge for the U.S. government set for launch on top of a Delta 4 Heavy rocket is likely the next in a line of sensitive eavesdropping satellites designed to detect radio signals and other communications traffic from opponents around the world.
The 235-meter-high (71.6-meter) rocket will bend east of Cape Canaveral following a clearance of Route 37B set for 2:12 a.m. EDT (0612 GMT) Thursday, according to standard pre-launch warnings issued to pilots and marinas to help them support drop zones in the descending fall under the Delta 4-Heavy runway.
The launch period Thursday runs until 6:25 a.m. EDT (1025 GMT), according to United Launch Alliance, the builder and operator of Delta 4.
Public information about the eastern trajectory of the Delta 4-Heavy suggests that the rocket is aimed at a circular geosynchronous orbit at full height more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) above the earth and close to the equator. To reach such an orbit, a rocket requires one to follow one of the most challenging flight profiles in the launch business, with three burn wounds through the upper stage of the Delta to use its satellite charge at the target altitude.
Four previous Delta 4 Heavy launches in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2016 followed similar trajectories following the ascent of Cape Canaveral, each with a classified charge for the National Reconnaissance Office. Independent analysts believe that all top secret NGO satellites are eavesdropping on space.
The NGO, part of the U.S. government’s intelligence community, says it has the charge on the Delta 4 Heavy rocket before launch Thursday. The mission is codenamed NROL-44.
In a “press kit” released before the launch, the NGO said the NROL-44 mission supports the agency’s “overall national security mission” to provide intelligence data to senior policy makers in the United States, the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. “
Following the typical practice of the Bureau of Minimal Disclosure, the NGO provided no further information on the classified payload set for launch Thursday.
But the satellite is probably related to the NGOs’ fleet of “Advanced Orion” as “Mentor” signals intelligence stations flying in equatorial geosynchronous orbits. The Advanced Orion series of satellites began launching on Titan 4 rockets in 1995, following a few previous NGOs Orion charge launches in space missions in the 1980s.
The NGO began using Delta 4-Heavy rockets for the Advanced Orion missions in 2009, following the retirement of the Titan 4 booster.
Like previous Delta 4-Heavy launches with Advanced Orion satellites, the launch time moves each day about four minutes earlier.
“The use of the Delta 4-Heavy, the eastern trajectory, and the four-minute-a-day lifting time, point to the launch of the eighth Advanced Orion satellite,” said Ted Molczan, an authoritative skywatcher who said: t satellite activity follows. “This signaling intelligence orbit is so large that when viewed from Earth, it shines with the brightness of an 8th magnitude, making it easily visible with small binoculars.”
Prior to the launch in 2010 of a suspected Advanced Orion satellite, then-NGO director Bruce Carlson called the charge ‘the largest satellite in the world.’ The satellites are believed to carry gigantic antennas that once travel in space up to a diameter of up to 100 meters, or 328 feet.
The antenna can probably be tuned to listen to phone calls, collect data broadcasts, and listen to other communications among U.S. opponents.
The geographical coverage area for the satellite set for launch on Tuesday is unknown, but the Advanced Orion spacecraft spans the globe, flying at just the right altitude to rotate the Earth at the same rate that the planet rotates. This allows the satellites to stay fixed over the same region of the planet.
It is also not known whether the new satellite will replace an older member of the Advanced Orion fleet, or expand the coverage of the network.
The Advanced Orion satellites require the combination of the Delta 4 Heavy Rocket lift function, long-range upper stage, and enormous 65-foot (19.8 meters) three-sector cargo paint.
Three RS-68A main engines, each built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, will emerge five seconds before takeoff. The engines will consume three tons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuels per second to power the Delta 4-Heavy rocket off the road with 2.1 million pounds of thrust, equivalent to 51 million horsepower.
With its center engine thrust down to save fuel, the Delta 4-Heavy will surpass the speed of sound about a minute and 18 seconds later and soar eastward across the Atlantic Ocean.
At T + plus 3 minutes, 56 seconds, the rocket’s 15-story high side boosters will shut down their RS-68A engines, and two seconds later separate from the Delta 4 to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. The center booster will raise the steam to full power to burn another one and a half minutes.
The core stage will deplete its propulsion at T + plus 5 minutes, 36 seconds, allowing the booster to drop six-and-a-half seconds later away from the top stage of Delta 4. At T + plus 5 minutes, 55 seconds will the top-stage Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10B-2 engine emerged with 24,750 pounds of thrust.
After climbing into the rare upper layers of the atmosphere, the Delta 4 will release its nose cone to lose weight and unlock the NROL-44 charge. The three-sector cap, specially designed to receive large NGO and military satellites, jetsisons of the launcher in three pieces instead of in two halves like charge valves used on most other missiles.
At that point, the mission will introduce an NGO-ordered news blackout. ULA will end its live coverage of the launch, and the rest of the launch sequence will take place without real-time updates on the progress of the flight.
Three shots of the top stage RL10 engine will be needed to place the NROL-44 charge in the straight geosynchronous orbit.
The first fire will place the rocket in a preliminary low-altitude parking lane, and a second fire will raise the apogee, as a peak, from the lane to more than 20,000 miles to reach an elliptical geosynchronous transfer lane.
After a coastline of several hours, the rocket will reload the RL10 engine to place the NROL-44 charge in an almost circular path around the Earth, and shake the satellite into orbit with an inclination at the equator.
Confirmation that the mission was successful is expected to be released by ULA and the NGO approximately seven hours after removal, once the spacecraft separates from the upper stage of Delta 4.
The launch Thursday will mark the 12th flight of a Delta 4 Heavy Rocket, and the 41st launch of a Delta 4 car since 2002. It will be the 385th flight of a Delta Rocket since 1960.
After Thursday, four more Delta 4 Heavy rockets are scheduled for launch through 2023, as ULA plans to withdraw the Delta rocket family in favor of the next-generation Vulcan Centaur launcher. All four remaining Delta 4 Heavy Missions will lift NGO charge – two from Cape Canaveral and two from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
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