A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV rocket blasted off Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 3:40 a.m. local time on Wednesday lighting up the pre-dawn sky. The towering rocket was carrying a classified National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) NROL-45 spy satellite.
The NRO is responsible for designing, building and operating the spy satellites of the United States. The federal agency was set up in 1961, four years after the Soviet Union started the space age with the launch of its Sputnik 1 satellite. The agency worked in secret for over more than decades until its existence was declassified in 1992.
The mission is ULA's second in six days after the Feb. 5 launch of an Atlas V rocket carrying a GPS satellite for the U.S. Air Force.
"Congratulations to the ULA team and our U.S. Air Force and NRO partners on the launch of NROL-45," says ULA vice president of Custom Services Laura Maginnis. "This is our second successful launch within five days for our U.S. government customer, a testament to our outstanding teamwork and focus on 100 percent mission success, one launch at a time."
The identity of the payload was classified but a short description on the ULA website says the mystery-shrouded mission will support national defense.
The trajectory of the rocket suggests that the satellite's objective is an orbit around the Earth's poles. Optical and radar-imaging spy satellites prefer polar orbits because these allow them to go over all points on the surface of Earth as it rotates.
Satellite trackers think that the mission deployed an image satellite in a series known as Topaz, a code name that came out in the documents that were leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The Topaz satellites are a series of radar imaging satellites made by Boeing for the Future Imagery Architecture program of the NRO. The program intended to design a new fleet of optical and radar imaging reconnaissance satellites but was eventually scaled down. Satellite Analyst Ted Molczan, who tracks military payloads, said that the spy satellite launched on Wednesday is likely the fourth in the series.
The ULA ended the launch webcast less than five minutes into the flight to preserve the secrecy of the mission, as requested by the NRO.
