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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Out to launch Friday night

Minotaur 2005 Our sky-eye-guy Bill Westphal says that, with a little luck, there’ll be something to see fairly early tomorrow night: a Delta II launch at Vandenberg AFB at 19:28:21 PDT (or 7:28 PM to us civilians).  Launch window is one second long, so either it happens or it doesn’t.  Weather permitting, launch should be visible for 200 miles.

The payload is an Italian COSMO-3 satellite going into near-polar orbit that will take radar images of Earth.

Detailed information about the launch is available at:

Boeing will simulcast Friday’s launch on the World Wide Web at:

  http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bls/missions/cosmo-3/

Another possible source of countdown status for the launch is the Spaceflight Now web site:

  http://www.spaceflightnow.com

On launch day, be sure to regularly hit the refresh button on your browser to see the latest information.

Says Bill:

Evening launches can provide spectacular results depending on the weather and Sunset vs Launch times. You can see some photos of a similar launch in my photo gallery at:

http://www.westphalfamily.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=11

The Minotaur launch on that day was at 19:24 hrs.

 

(Picture by Bill)

Posted on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 07:49 AM in Watch the Skies |

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