The Next US Moonshot Will Launch From Virginia 92
As reported by the Washington Post, a U.S. spacecraft headed for the moon (to circle it, though, not to land) is to be launched for the first time from the facility at Virginia's Wallops Island. If you'll be in the D.C. area on the night of September 6 and the weather cooperates enough for a launch, it should be worth staying up for. "The robotic mission is to collect detailed information about the moon's thin atmosphere. Sometimes thought to be nonexistent, the lunar atmosphere has been described as extremely tenuous and fragile, but present. According to the space agency, the launch will record many firsts. One will be the first launch beyond Earth orbit from the Virginia facility. It also will be the first flight for the Minotaur V rocket, NASA said. NASA said the five-stage Air Force rocket is an excess ballistic missile that was transformed into a space-launch vehicle. It will boost the space probe into position for it to reach lunar orbit."
Though the satellite is NASA's, the launch will be controlled by Orbital Sciences.
Re:Uhm... why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Orbital Sciences is running the mission--for whatever reason, they've set up shop just outside Wallops and have been spending quite a bit of time and money getting one of the pads at Wallops set up for Minotaur and Antares launches. It could be because it's closer to their manufacturing facilities, because they've been launch at WFF with smaller rockets many years, because the costs of using the pad and facilities at WFF are cheaper than the big pads at KSC, or whatever; but the point is that Orbital is running the mission and almost certainly chose to use WFF themselves. While it's true they might get better performance launching from KSC, it would shock me if WFF wasn't much cheaper to run out of. But even if it weren't, Orbital has invested in their operations at Wallops and is very unlikely move everything down to Florida now. I don't know what the deal is here, but in this case I suspect it's just a business decision by Orbital and nothing more sinister.