{"id":12351,"date":"2020-07-15T00:07:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T16:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/photos-minotaur-4-rocket-ready-for-launch-from-virginia\/"},"modified":"2020-07-15T00:07:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T16:07:00","slug":"photos-minotaur-4-rocket-ready-for-launch-from-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/photos-minotaur-4-rocket-ready-for-launch-from-virginia\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos: Minotaur 4 rocket ready for launch from Virginia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 78-foot-tall (23.8-meter) Minotaur 4 rocket is poised for liftoff Wednesday from Virginia\u2019s Eastern Shore carrying four top secret payloads into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office.<\/p>\n

The Northrop Grumman-built rocket, using three retired Peacekeeper missile stages and a commercial solid rocket motor upper stage, is standing on pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, located at NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.<\/p>\n

The Minotaur 4 rocket is slated to blast off on the NROL-129 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency in charge of the U.S. government\u2019s spy satellite fleet. Details about the four payloads on the rocket have not been disclosed.<\/p>\n

The launch will mark the seventh launch of a Minotaur rocket from Wallops Island, Virginia, and the first Minotaur flight from Wallops since November 2013. It will be the 27th flight of a Minotaur rocket overall since 2000, including suborbital and orbital flights from Wallops, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Kodiak Island in Alaska, and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.<\/p>\n

These photos show the Minotaur 4 rocket on pad 0B at Wallops Island, Virginia. See our Mission Status Center for live updates on the countdown and launch.<\/p>\n

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Credit: NRO\/Northrop Grumman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: U.S. Space Force<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Four NRO payloads are enclosed inside the Minotaur 4 rocket\u2019s payload fairing for launch Wednesday from Wallops Island, Virginia. Credit: NRO\/Northrop Grumman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The 78-foot-tall (23.8-meter) Minotaur rocket stands on pad 0B at Wallops Island, Virginia. Credit: NASA\/Chris Perry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Northrop Grumman\u2019s Minotaur 4 rocket stands on pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia. Credit: NRO\/Northrop Grumman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: Northrop Grumman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Credit: NASA\/Chris Perry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 78-foot-tall (23.8-meter) Minotaur 4 rocket is poised for liftoff Wednesday from Virginia\u2019s Eastern Shore carrying four top secret payloads into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office. The Northrop Grumman-built rocket, using three retired Peacekeeper missile stages and a commercial solid rocket motor upper stage, is standing on pad 0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25,2166,1698,257,2167,1139,848,554],"class_list":["post-12351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-launch","tag-launch-pad-0b","tag-mid-atlantic-regional-spaceport","tag-military-space","tag-minotaur","tag-minotaur-4","tag-national-reconnaissance-office","tag-northrop-grumman"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}