The behemoth on your screen is the three-engine Delta IV Heavy, an unmanned rocket that’s taller than a 23-story building. In this video, released by United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed alliance that created the U.S.’ biggest pilotless rocket, the Delta IV blasts into space yesterday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, creating a boom so massive the Air Force had to tell the surrounding townspeople it wasn’t Judgment Day.
“We got the word out to people, so they don’t think it’s an earthquake,” Lt. Ann K. Blodzinski, an Air Force spokeswoman, told the Los Angeles Times. “Even if you don’t see it, you’re definitely going to feel it. It’s significantly more powerful than our typical launches at Vandenberg.” All previous launches of the Delta IV have come from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, making yesterday’s flight the biggest that the U.S. has ever sent into space from the west coast.
So good news: the thing that the rocket is launching is a schoolbus-sized mechanical spy. The Delta IV carries a top-secret spy satellite from the National Reconnaissance Office, known officially as NROL-49. It’s believed that satellite is an electro-optical “Keyhole” satellite, which floats in low-Earth orbit, snapping high-resolution pictures in visible light and infrared. These are the sorts of satellites the U.S. uses to spy on Russian nukes. The official mission of the satellite is, of course, classified. But it takes one massive rocket to get it off the ground.
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