Unmanned NASA Rocket Lifts Off From Wallops Island, On Way To Moon

A moon-bound NASA rocket was launched successfully Friday evening from Virginia's Wallops Island. The launch was visible over a wide stretch of the east coast; YouTube videos are beginning to show up. The robotic probe, to study lunar dust, is the first rocket launched into outer space from the Virginia launch site.

Comments

Where's the shortcut for undoing laziness

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube videos are beginning to show up

How about linking to NASA's video of it?

Not the First Launch from this Site

[Teancum]

It would help if sometimes some basic fact checking went into summaries. Of course how often are Slashdot summaries even remotely accurate?

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport has been used for other launches, but admittedly they have all been either sub-orbital sounding rockets or orbital spacecraft. This is the first "deep space" mission to fly out of this particular spaceport... so I suppose there is a "first" in there somewhere.

I'll also admit that it is nice to see some success from companies other than SpaceX. Kudos on the part of Orbital Sciences for getting this flight to work.... and to get the spacecraft to the Moon. It also doesn't hurt that the launch could be seen by a million or so people due to the proximity of the launch site to Washington DC & Baltimore.

Re:Not the First Launch from this Site

[geogob]

I usually agree with the edition problem of Slashdot, but here I see thing with a bit more nuance. First, the summary accurately summarizes the linked article. It does exactly what it should do. Of course, on a site like Slashdot, where the techical and scientific accuracy is expected higher then elsewhere, a noet from the editor pointing the innacuracy in the linked and summerized article would have been nice. But that can't really be expect frm most Slashdot editors.

Then one can debate whether the information is accurate or not. It all comes to a poorly defined expression, "outer space". It canbe interpreted many ways. But regardless, the formulation is either false or missleeding.

Sadly, the editors here do not edit... Its simply moderated posting. Nothing more.

Re:WTF?

[mbone]

Well, you have the first Orbital Sciences Antares launch to resupply the ISS, currently scheduled for September 17. That is a bigger rocket I believe and also should be quite a show.

Orbital's Antares team is targeting a launch time of 11:16 a.m., which is at the opening of an available 15-minute launch window.

Re:Deep Space yes, Outer space no

[rossdee]

" The first payload launched into orbit from Wallops was Explorer IX, atop a Scout booster, on February 15, 1961

  Any orbit is in outer space, so the WaPo missed that one by almost half a century.

Don't you mean more than half a century (1961 to 2013 is 52 years)

Its not rocket science, just arithmetic

Re:Deep Space yes, Outer space no

[Teancum]

Deep space is sort of a question of distance too. Most current mission planning considers anything beyond the Moon as being "real" deep space, although the real accomplishment would be to send something outside of the Solar System as genuinely "deep space". Of course you could say they are still having to deal with magnetic fields, stellar wind, and all sorts of other problems that aren't so common in "real deep space" like the stuff between galaxies.

None the less, it really was a neat accomplishment for Orbital Science and I'm glad that the launch was successful. It was also historic for Orbital and that counts for something too, even if the reporter at the Washington Post wasn't so clueful about the issues involved.

Perhaps Jeff Bezos will help enlighten that reporter. I hear he knows a thing or two about rocketry and orbital spaceflight himself, not to mention being that reporter's boss doesn't hurt either.