• Select Content
• View only Live shows
• View only SpacePods
• View only Podcasts
• View only Articles
• View only Launch Events

The delayed Minotaur IV finally launches and its payload plays hide and seek, or… hide and keep hiding on your Spacevidcast for April 27th, 2010.

Last Thursday, April 22nd at 2300 UTC an all new rocket from the US Air Force and Orbial Sciences launched: The Minotaur IV Light. This new rocket uses U.S. Government furnished solid rocket motors from decommissioned peacekeeper ICBM’s as well as a commercial solid rocket upper stage. The rest of the vehicle is based on Orbital’s past rockets such as the smaller Minotaur I and Pegasus. While this particular launch was sub-orbital, the Minotaur IV is actually designed to be a orbital launch system.

The Minotaur IV has seen some delays. It was discovered that a gas generator in the 3rd stage of the rocket would produce unintended thrust after the motor burned out. Engineers had to go back and design a new diffuser to reduce that unintended thrust, which then delayed the debut of the rocket itself. Projects such as the Space Based Space Surveillance Satellite or SBSS have been delayed since October of last year due to the Minotaur IV issues. This setback has caused a cascading delay for military satellite deployment. Some satellites have been moved to other launch vehicles such as the Delta II while others have had to wait for the Minotaur IV configuration to be fixed. Now that the Air Force and Orbital have been able to successfully launch the Minotaur IV, it is expected that they will be able to catch up on that backlog.

While the launch itself was a success, the payload, not so much. Aboard the Minotaur IV Light was DARPA’s Hypersonic test vehicle. The payload was known as the Falcon HTV-2a Glide Vehicle and is designed to re-enter the atmosphere and fly across the Pacific Ocean at speeds of around 13,000 miles per hour, or 20,000 kilometers per hour. The HTV was supposed to test technologies that could eventually be employed by a system capable of prompt global response missions. Well, that was the plan at least.

The vehicle was released from the Minotaur’s third stage and it looks like Orbital’s rocket did deliver the HTV glide vehicle and separate as planned, but something went wrong. The craft was supposed to try out its aerodynamic control systems, do a bunch of turns to burn off some energy and then glide over the Pacific Ocean at that awesome 13,000 miles per hour before splashing down in the sea near the US Army’s Regan Test Site. Unfortunately, Tracking systems lost contact with the Falcon HTV-2a around 9 minutes after liftoff. DARPA has not yet said if any of the HTVs mission objectives were completed before communications with the craft were lost. Hehe, oops.

And finally, 51 years ago today the Mercury 7 Astronauts first reported for duty. Project Mercury was the first Human Space Flight program in the United States running from 1959 to 1963. The goal of Project Mercury was to put a human in orbit around the Earth. The first human flight on Mercury was with Alan Shepard on May 5th, 1961 which was a sub-orbital flight, and on February 20th, 1962 the goal of orbiting the Earth was met with Astronaut John Glenn.

Don’t forget to join us this Friday at 0200 UTC for Spacevidcast Live. This week we will have on guest Bill Suitor who is the author of Rocketbet Pilot’s Manual. This is your chance to ask someone who has actually flown a rocketbelt your own questions. For those of you in the US the show will be this Thursday at 7:00pm PDT or 10:00pm EDT. Remember to pick up your copy of the Rocketbelt Pilot’s Manual from Apogeebooks.com before the show and we’ll see you there!