In California, storied Delta II rocket set for final launch with NASA satellite
James Dean
After a first launch on Valentine’s Day nearly 30 years ago, the Delta II rocket went on to become a beloved workhorse launcher of military, science and commercial missions.
On Saturday morning in California, a 132-foot Delta II is scheduled to blast off for the 155th and final time, carrying a $1 billion NASA climate science mission.
It’s the end of the line for the turquoise-and-white booster that launched dozens of GPS satellites that helped transform military operations and everyday life, and more than a handful of spacecraft to Mars, among its many highlights.
“I’m a little bit melancholy about this,” Tim Dunn, the mission’s NASA launch director, said Thursday. “Delta II holds a really special place in so many folks' in launch industry’s hearts.”
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Liftoff from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg is targeted for 8:46 a.m. EDT Saturday, the opening of a 40-minute window. The forecast shows no weather concerns.
The final Delta II mission comes two months after the 45th Space Wing demolished twin pads at Launch Complex 17, the rocket’s former home at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
A Delta II last flew from the Cape almost seven years to the day, launching NASA’s GRAIL mission to map the moon’s gravity fields.
In all, Launch Complex 17 hosted 110 Delta II missions, including 48 GPS launches.
Other notable missions for NASA included the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers; the Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters; Mars Pathfinder lander; Spitzer Space Telescope; the Mercury-orbiting Messenger probe; asteroid explorers NEAR and Dawn; and the comet-smashing Deep Impact.
The rocket also has deployed weather and Earth science spacecraft like the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 mission, or ICESat-2, launching Saturday.
“The Delta II vehicle has touched the lives of probably every single person in America in the technology that it has enabled over its 30 years,” said Scott Messer, United Launch Alliance’s manager for NASA programs.
A successful final launch would be the 100th in a row by a Delta II, a highly reliable rocket that is also remembered for one of the most spectacular failures in the modern era.
On Jan. 17, 1997, a Delta II carrying a GPS satellite exploded 13 seconds into its flight from the Cape, raining debris over the launch team's blockhouse and destroying some cars parked nearby.
The Delta II was born out of tragedy. After NASA’s space shuttle Challenger accident in 1986 that killed seven astronauts, the military was forced to find a different way to get GPS satellites into space.
McDonnell Douglas won a contract to develop the Delta II and begin launching GPS satellites that otherwise would have launched on the shuttle.
The company was later bought by Boeing, which in 2006 merged its Delta fleet with Lockheed Martin’s Atlas rockets through the United Launch Alliance joint venture.
For the final launch, ULA resumed a tradition of putting stars on the rocket that once counted the number of successful launches. This time, some 200 stars carry the signatures of about 800 retirees, customers and others who worked on the program over the years.
“It’s been a very, very prominent part of space history and a very important part of probably everyone’s life in America,” said Messer.
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Farewell, Delta II
- Rocket: United Launch Alliance Delta II 7420-10 (with four side-mounted solid motors)
- Mission: NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2)
- Launch Time: 8:46 a.m. EDT Saturday
- Launch Window: 40 minutes, to 9:26 a.m. EDT
- Launch Complex: 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California
- Weather: 100 percent “go”
Visit floridatoday.com to watch NASA TV’s broadcast of the final Delta II rocket launch, which will be streamed live starting at 8:10 a.m. EDT Saturday.