United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket successfully launched a classified National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) payload, codenamed NROL-44 at 20:09 EST on Thursday, 10 December (01:09 UTC on Friday, 12 December).
The flight marked the first Delta IV mission since the Medium+ variant retired in August 2019 and the first Delta IV Heavy since January 2019. Although ULA is phasing out the Delta IV in favor of its Vulcan rocket, the Heavy configuration has five contracted missions through 2024.
(Lead image: Stephen Marr for NSF/L2)