Santa Maria Sun / News

Atlas rocket launch set for September

BY JEREMY THOMAS

The long-delayed launch of an Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base has been rescheduled for Sept. 13, base officials said.

With a top-secret National Reconnaissance Office payload onboard, the United Launch Alliance-built rocket is scheduled to launch from Space Launch Complex 3, pending final testing of the Mission Flight Control Center.

The control center contains computer servers that transmit essential data to the mission control officer. It malfunctioned during the initial attempt to launch the Atlas on Aug 2. The launch has since been pushed back several times to give technicians time to fix the problem.

The massive rocket is set to carry the National Reconnaissance Office’s classified NROL-36 vehicle into space, as well as deploy 11 “CubeSat” satellites commissioned by NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNA) program, Cal Poly, the University of California, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Morehead State. Other satellites originate from the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the Aerospace Corp., the University of Southern California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.