Atlas V Rocket Launches Sharp-Eyed Earth-Observing Satellite (space.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: A super-powerful Earth-observing spacecraft has finally taken to the skies, nearly two months after a wildfire nixed its first launch attempt. The WorldView-4 satellite lifted off today (Nov. 11) at 1:30 p.m. EST (10:30 a.m. local time; 1830 GMT), riding a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex-3 at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base to a near sun-synchronous, pole-to-pole orbit. In addition, seven tiny cubesats were onboard in a "ridesharing" initiative. All of the cubesats manifested for the WorldView-4 mission are sponsored by the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency in charge of the United States' spy satellites, and are unclassified technology-demonstration programs. The Atlas-V that lofted WorldView-4 today had been scheduled to launch NASA's InSight Mars lander earlier this year, before issues with one of InSight's instruments delayed the Red Planet probe's liftoff until 2018. WorldView-4 is a multispectral, high-resolution commercial imaging satellite owned and operated by DigitalGlobe of Westminster, Colorado, and built by the aerospace company Lockheed Martin. Its mission is to provide high-resolution color imagery to commercial, government and international customers. Once in operation, WorldView-4 has a global capacity to image 260,000 square miles (680,000 square kilometers) per day. You can watch the launch video here via United Launch Alliance.

Comments

Thanks for that.

[dwywit]

I've just spent 40 minutes watching shuttle and apollo launch footage. Got to stop followng launch video links.

Re:Thanks for that.

[Solandri]

While Kennedy Space Center offers the best view of launches (launchpads surrounded by lots of flat land), if you're in California it can be worth it to drive to Vandenberg to view a launch of one of the larger rockets. It's only about 2.5 hours from Los Angeles, 4 hours from San Francisco. The launch pads are on an Air Force base surrounded by hills so you probably won't be able to see the initial liftoff.* But there are several locations which will allow you to see the rocket after it's gained a bit of altitude.

Check the launch schedule to find one you'd like to see. Double-check the week and day before, as launches are frequently postponed. I used my cell phone's data to tap into a live video webstream of the launch on my phone, and output the countdown over my car's speakers for everyone to hear (which also gave us a good indication when to look for the rocket appearing over the hills). Be aware that most of the rockets are liquid fueled, so leave almost no smoke trail (liquid O2 + liquid H2 = H2O or water vapor). If you can catch one which uses solid rocket boosters, those will leave a heavy smoke trail. And these things are fast - it'll be out of sight within a couple minutes, so don't go hoping to keep the kids entertained for a few hours.

* The exception is the SLC-3E pad which is visible from Surf Beach and Ocean Ave, but last time I went for a launch from SLC-3E they had closed off the beach and Ocean Ave. Launches from SLC-6 are also visible from Surf Beach almost immediately after liftoff, though the greater distance makes it less enjoyable. Launches are towards the south and they close off the parks, beaches, and ocean to the south the day of the launch, so don't bother trying those locations.

Area scanned.

[rew]

Let me get this straight..... Meteosat images 500 million square kilometers some 16 times a day, and this satelite does a whopping 680 thousand per day....

The number only becomes impressive when you include resolution figures. (Meteosat is pretty low-res).

Re:shipped, not "ridesharing"

[Richard_at_work]

Actually, ridesharing might be appropriate in this case - the cubesats arent paying for their launch, they are hitching a ride with the NRO satellite to a usable orbit. This is actually quite common - many payloads are launched with ballast for weight and balance reasons, and quite often you can get a cheap or free launch for a small satellite such as a cubesat so long as it doesn't interfere with the primary payload.