How do you send a giant rocket into space from California without anyone knowing? You can’t, really, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve got to tell everyone what the thing is hauling. US intelligence services launched the Delta IV Heavy rocket into space from the Vandenberg military base yesterday afternoon. That much we know. What we don’t know, however, is precisely what the thing was carrying.
Of course, such secrecy didn’t stop the military from bragging about the whole thing. The government actually issued a press release for the event. “This launch marks a significant milestone in our nation’s space capability,” said Lt. Col. Brady Hauboldt in the release. “We’ve really restored a national capability for heavy lift on the Western Range… This extends our ability to cost-effectively deliver payloads of all sizes and compliments.”
The logical guess here is that the rocket is carrying a really big, really expensive satellite–an “imagery intelligence satellite,” with a price tag of around one billion dollars.
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