Weather permitting, NASA plans to launch a Minotaur I rocket tonight sometime between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm from their Wallops Island facility on the Virginia coast.
The chief goal of this flight is to place the 880-pound TacSat-3 satellite with its trio of payloads that will offer real-time imagery (within 10-minutes of collection), sea-based information transmitted from ocean buoys and plug-and-play avionics to assist warfighters in keeping one step ahead of their adversaries. In addition, three “cubesats” will be launched as secondary payloads on the TacSat-3 mission.
If the rocket blasts off on schedule, this will be only the 3rd time in the last 13-1/2 years that NASA will have used this coastal Virginia range.
Based on a very similar launch from Wallops Island in December 2006 and similar dusk and dawn launches from Vandenberg as a guide, it’s possible that today’s post-sunset launch may be visible as far north as southern Maine, as far south as northeastern Florida and as far west as eastern Kentucky.
Look up if you live on the east coast!
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