{"id":16172,"date":"2015-07-19T23:46:33","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T15:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/preview-enhanced-rocket-engine-to-power-delta-4-first-stage-wednesday\/"},"modified":"2015-07-19T23:46:33","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T15:46:33","slug":"preview-enhanced-rocket-engine-to-power-delta-4-first-stage-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/preview-enhanced-rocket-engine-to-power-delta-4-first-stage-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: Enhanced rocket engine to power Delta 4 first stage Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Credit:
Credit: ULA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 Using a new, uprated main engine for the first time on a rocket of its kind, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Medium+ vehicle will soar into space Wednesday night carrying a $566 million Air Force communications satellite.<\/p>\n

The enhanced RS-68A main engine will power the medium-lift rocket off the pad at Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 37 with the Wideband Global SATCOM satellite No. 7 bound for a super-synchronous transfer orbit.<\/p>\n

The evening\u2019s launch opportunity extends from 8:07 to 8:46 p.m. EDT.<\/p>\n

Weather forecasters are projecting a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions for launch, with clouds and lightning the primary concerns.<\/p>\n

ULA and propulsion-provider Aerojet Rocketdyne have phased out the original RS-68 engines in favor of flying A-models of the powerplant on all future Delta 4 vehicles, no matter the configuration of the rocket.<\/p>\n

The RS-68A program successfully flew three engines in June 2012 aboard a triple-body Delta 4-Heavy rocket carrying a massive National Reconnaissance Office satellite directly into geosynchronous orbit. That was for the Delta 4-Heavy Upgrade initiative.<\/p>\n

Now, as part of streamlining construction to make all the internal structures of the Delta 4 first stage the same, no matter if it is flying with strap-on solids or not, the RS-68A\u2019s increase in performance will allow builders to make only one type of core.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve used RS-68A to standardize our Common Booster Core that can support any of our Medium configurations \u2014 the 4,2, the 5,2 and the 5,4, while still giving us that lift capability of each of those configurations,\u201d said Ron Fortson, ULA director of mission management.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was for increased performance as well as making the booster common for increased manifest flexibility. That commonality also also reduced a lot of our production engineering costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: Aerojet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The RS-68A, fed with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, delivers 702,000 pounds of liftoff thrust, an increase of 39,000 pounds over the RS-68 engine. It is considered the world\u2019s most powerful cryogenic engine.<\/p>\n

The turbomachinery has been modified to enable the engine to operate at a higher thrust level \u2014 108.5 instead of 102 percent \u2014 to provide extra performance, and improved combustion efficiency to achieve better miles-per-gallon fuel consumption.<\/p>\n

The RS-68A will fire for four minutes, lifting the vehicle to the edge of space before completing its burn. Following staging, the cryogenic upper stage performs a 16-minute firing to reach a parking orbit and then a 3-minute boost to reach a super-synchronous transfer orbit stretching to 36,000 nautical miles, tilted 24 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n

Deployment of the 13,000-pound payload occurs over Madagascar some 42 minutes after liftoff.<\/p>\n

See our timeline of the rocket\u2019s ascent.<\/p>\n

\"The
The WGS 7 is encapsulated in the rocket\u2019s nose cone. Credit: ULA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This will be the first WGS launch since August 2013. Ten WGS satellites will be orbited in the Pentagon\u2019s efforts to replace the aging Defense Satellite Communication System with new technology. Each WGS has 10 times the capacity of a DSCS satellite, allowing users to process and receive data quicker.<\/p>\n

\u201cWGS 7 is the seventh of ten high-capacity military communications satellites providing vital service for our tactical forces that rely on WGS for connectivity to the Defense Information Network,\u201d said Col. David Leach, USAF 5th Space Launch Squadron commander.<\/p>\n

WGS No. 7, a Boeing-built communications spacecraft, will serve troops, ships, drones and civilian leaders. Its the second batch of WGS satellites made after the original half-dozen was manufactured and there was a gap in production.<\/p>\n

The satellites supply communications such as maps and data to soldiers on the battlefield, relay video from unmanned aerial reconnaissance drones, route voice calls and data messaging, and even offer quality-of-life considerations like television broadcasts and email delivery to the troops.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis constellation provides wideband communications to our Soldiers, Airmen, Marines and international partners through broadcast, multi-cast, point-to-point communications anytime, anywhere around the world,\u201d said Robert Tarleton, head of the Air Force\u2019s Military Satellite Communications Directorate.<\/p>\n

\"The
The 6 previous Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launches for WGS. Photos by ULA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WGS 1:<\/strong> Oct. 10, 2007 (Atlas 5) Coverage of the Pacific
\nWGS 2:<\/strong> April 3, 2009 (Atlas 5) Coverage of the Middle East and Asia
\nWGS 3:<\/strong> Dec. 5, 2009 (Delta 4) Coverage of Europe and Africa
\nWGS 4:<\/strong> Jan. 19, 2012 (Delta 4) Coverage of the Middle East and Asia
\nWGS 5:<\/strong> May 24, 2013 (Delta 4) Coverage of the Americas
\nWGS 6:<\/strong> Aug. 7, 2013 (Delta 4) Coverage of the Americas<\/p>\n

WGS 7:<\/strong> Wednesday
\nWGS 8:<\/strong> 2016
\nWGS 9:<\/strong> 2017
\nWGS 10:<\/strong> 2019<\/p>\n

\u201cULA is honored to be the launch provider for the WGS constellation,\u201d said Fortson.<\/p>\n

\"WGS<\/p>\n

After circularizing its orbit and undergoing checkouts, the new satellite will enter service from geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator in December or January. The exact parking spot remains to be determined.<\/p>\n

It is outfitted with Ka- and X-band communications packages to be the Department of Defense\u2019s highest capacity communications satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur forces need communications. It\u2019s a fundamental need and it simply has to be there. More and more, WGS is what puts it there,\u201d said Rico Attanasio, Boeing director of Military Satellite Communications.<\/p>\n

The launch is planned to occur just seven says after ULA\u2019s last flight, which successfully placed the GPS 2F-10 navigation satellite into orbit for the Air Force using an Atlas 5 rocket.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe focus on one launch at a time,\u201d said Col. Alvin Burse, the Air Force\u2019s WGS 7 mission director.<\/p>\n

This will be the 372nd Delta rocket launch since 1960, the 30th Delta 4 rocket since debuting in 2002, the fifth time a Delta has launched a WGS communications satellite, ULA\u2019s 98th mission since 2006 and the company\u2019s seventh this year.<\/p>\n

See our earlier WGS 7 coverage.<\/p>\n

Our Delta archive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit: ULA CAPE CANAVERAL \u2014 Using a new, uprated main engine for the first time on a rocket of its kind, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Medium+ vehicle will soar into space Wednesday night carrying a $566 million Air Force communications satellite. The enhanced RS-68A main engine will power the medium-lift rocket off the pad […]<\/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":[437,670,3992,1688,3158,750,3993,3474],"class_list":["post-16172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-air-force","tag-boeing","tag-delta-372","tag-delta-4","tag-preview","tag-united-launch-alliance","tag-wgs-7","tag-wideband-global-satcom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16172"}],"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=16172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}