Virginia Launches Satellite

I’m a little late with this, but its still a cool story. For the first time in 21 years, a satellite was launched into space from a rocket in Virginia. My brother, who lives on the lower Chesapeake, was able to snap a photo of the rocket in flight as it streaked into orbit. It was a white streak of smoke. This photo below is of the Minotaur Rocket from Wikipedia.

From the Daily Press here:

WALLOPS ISLAND — With the light of a thousand suns and a blast that shattered the stillness of the dawn, Virginia’s Eastern Shore went back into the satellite business Saturday.

When a relic of the Cold War lifted off from a launch pad, carrying an 814-pound Air Force payload and some NASA bacteria toward a rose-colored sky, a gathering of about 80 in the chill in a grassy field just over a mile away broke into cheers and applause.

Nearby, the imaginations of officials from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport soared just as high as the 69-foot-tall Minotaur I rocket that trailed a corkscrew of smoke as it streaked into the atmosphere at 17,000 mph.

It’s actually been 21 years since a satellite was successfully launched into orbit from the ground at Wallops Island.

That’s right. Virginia has a freakin’ spaceport. Cool!