Posted on 06/20/2016 9:20:55 AM PDT by Purdue77
Last week, the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office launched NROL-37, carrying its latest spy satellite into geosynchronous orbit via Delta IV-Heavy rocket. But it only took amateur space enthusiasts a few days to locate the mysterious new craft in the skies near Malaysia, over the Strait of Malacca.
While the contents and capabilities of the NROL-37 mission's payload are classified (the satellite is innocuously labeled US-268), its need to hitch a ride on the world's biggest rocket strongly suggests it is the seventh member of the Mentor/Orion family, an extra-large class of signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites which help provide eavesdropping capability to US intelligence agencies.
It’s good to hear we actually still have a space program, anyway.
#8 It is amazing they got that whole building into space!
I am assuming a giant rubber band between the 2 towers on either side and under the payload and whoosh! off it went!
#10 I stand corrected.......
Those two big towers (that look like transmitter towers) are really lightning rods. All of the launch pads at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center have them now to prevent lightning strikes to the rockets.
In the 1960’s a U.S. Jupiter IRBM mobile missile, with a thermonuclear warhead fitted, was struck by lightning while standing, outside, on alert in Italy. Luckily neither the warhead or it’s high explosive trigger, surrounding the nuclear pit, went off.
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