Launch News Orbital ATK Minotaur-C, SkySat, October 31st 2017

[IronRain]

Orbital ATK’s Taurus-XL rocket – now renamed Minotaur-C – returned to flight on Tuesday with a commercial mission deploying ten satellites for Planet Labs, six and a half years after its last launch ended in failure. Liftoff took place from Vandenberg Air Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 576E (SLC-576E) at 14:37 local time (21:37 UTC).

Tuesday’s launch was the first time that Orbital ATK has flown their Minotaur-C rocket since it was renamed in 2014. Formerly known as Taurus, the rocket last flew in March 2011 when it suffered the second of two consecutive – and near-identical – launch failures.

Minotaur-C is based on Orbital ATK’s air-launched Pegasus rocket, substituting the carrier aircraft for a powerful solid rocket motor to carry the vehicle away from the ground.

Early launches used SR118 solid rocket motors from decommissioned Peacekeeper missiles. However, Orbital later switched to Castor 120 motors in order to open up the rocket up to commercial customers.

Beginning with a March 1994 maiden flight, Minotaur-C made nine launches under the Taurus name: six successful and three failures.

The rocket’s first failure occurred during the sixth launch in September 2001 when control of the vehicle was briefly lost after first stage separation. Although the rocket resumed its planned course after about five seconds, it was unable to place the commercial OrbView-4 imaging satellite into orbit.

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Source:
* Nasaspaceflight.com

 

[IronRain]

Launch video:

My heart stopped a little when telemetry was lost :shifty:

 

[Notebook]

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