Classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.
The Minotaur I launch system is derived from converted Minuteman II ICBMs and is used to launch small satellites for the US Government. The first and second stages, taken directly from decommissioned Minuteman missiles, are mated to the Orion third and fourth stages taken from the Pegasus XL air-launched rocket family. An optional hydrazine-powered fifth stage called HAPS can be used.The Minotaur I launch system is derived from converted Minuteman II ICBMs and is used to launch small satellites for the US Government. An optional hydrazine-powered fifth stage called HAPS can be used.
A Cold War-era missile motor cast with solid propellant in 1966 fired up for the first time Wednesday to catapult a Northrop Grumman Minotaur 1 rocket off a launch pad in Virginia with three small spacecraft for the U.S. government’s spy s…
The small rockets are not cheap, but they are effective.
A Northrop Grumman Minotaur 1 launched three National Reconnaissance Office payloads on June 15 at 9:35 a.m. Eastern from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Clad in a yellow thermal blanket that will peel away at liftoff, a 69-foot-tall Minotaur 1 rocket is standing on a launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia, ready to deliver three small National Reconnaissance Office spacecraft to orbit.
Northrop Grumman launched three national security payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on the NROL-111 mission. The company used their solid propellant Minotaur I rocket to place the payloads into a low Earth orbit with a …