{"id":53219,"date":"2023-06-22T17:26:33","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T09:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nrol-68-satellite-aloft-as-ula-delta-iv-winds-down\/"},"modified":"2023-06-22T17:26:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T09:26:33","slug":"nrol-68-satellite-aloft-as-ula-delta-iv-winds-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nrol-68-satellite-aloft-as-ula-delta-iv-winds-down\/","title":{"rendered":"NROL-68 Satellite Aloft, As ULA Delta IV Winds Down"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>National Reconnaissance Office<\/strong> (NRO), <strong>U.S. Space Force<\/strong>\u2019s Space Launch Delta 45, Space Systems Command (SSC), and&nbsp;<strong>United Launch Alliance<\/strong> (ULA), launched the NRO\u2019s NROL-68 satellite on June 22 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. in what is to be the second-to-last rocket mission for the ULA Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>NRO said that it has launched 16 missions since NROL-22 in 2006 aboard Delta IV Medium and Heavy variants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur architecture is evolving to ensure the United States remains the undisputed leader in space,\u201d Chris Scolese, the NRO director, said in a statement. \u201cThe capabilities we are putting into orbit expand our intelligence advantage and enable us to deliver on our mission of keeping America safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The final Delta IV Heavy mission is to occur next year.<\/p>\n<p>Following the retirement of Delta IV next year, \u201cit will be superseded by ULA\u2019s Vulcan, which will lift the next generation of national security and commercial satellites into space with its own innovations,\u201d SSC said.<\/p>\n<p>This month, SSC assigned&nbsp;12 National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions&nbsp;to&nbsp;SpaceX and ULA \u2014 six for each provider \u2014under the fiscal 2023 NSSL Phase 2 Launch Service Procurement contract.<\/p>\n<p>Under SSC\u2019s newly announced assignments, SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rockets will launch three Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites from the western range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, for the Space Development Agency\u2019s (SDA) Tranche 1 Transport Layer, one from Vandenberg for the SDA\u2019s Tranche 1 Tracking Layer, and one satellite for the \u201cclassified\u201d USSF-31 mission from the eastern range at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n<p>ULA will use its Vulcan Centaur rockets for two NRO missions\u2013NROL-64 from Cape Canaveral and NROL-83 from Vandenberg; a Global Positioning System III launch from Cape Canaveral, the \u201cclassified\u201d USSF-114 mission from Vandenberg, and two SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer launches from Vandenberg.<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was first published by Via Satellite sister publication Defense Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), U.S. Space Force\u2019s Space Launch Delta 45, Space Systems Command (SSC), and&nbsp;United Launch Alliance (ULA), launched the NRO\u2019s NROL-68 satellite on June 22 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. in what is to be the second-to-last rocket mission for the ULA Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle. NRO said that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53221,"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":[],"class_list":["post-53219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53219"}],"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=53219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}