Delta rockets retired with launch of US reconnaissance satellite
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The U.S. Space Force and a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture sent a secret reconnaissance payload to orbit on Tuesday atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket, the last flight of a workhorse launch vehicle brand that has logged nearly 400 missions dating back to 1960. The United Launch Alliance-owned rocket, standing roughly 23 stories tall, blasted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida around 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), 12 days after a previous launch attempt was scrubbed at the last minute due to a technical glitch. The flight was intended to deploy a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), a U.S. defense intelligence agency, on a classified mission designated as NROL-70. The Space Force field command confirmed hours later that the launch had successfully delivered the payload to orbit. It marked the 16th and final flight of a Delta IV Heavy and the last of any of the Delta family of rockets, a space launch dynasty that originated from a modified intermediate-range ballistic missile and grew to include about two dozen increasingly powerful variants. Since the Thor-Delta rocket was introduced in 1960 at the dawn of the Space Age, the Delta brand has logged 389 launches, with payloads ranging from the world's first weather and GPS satellites to NASA science missions including eight spacecraft to Mars. The world's first passive communications satellite, Echo 1A, and first active communications satellite, Telstar 1, which enabled transatlantic television transmission, were launched by Thor-Deltas in 1960 and 1962, respectively. Among other space science missions, Delta II rockets launched the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2003, and a Delta IV sent the Parker Solar Probe to space in 2018. ULA, a partnership of aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed, is retiring Delta and Atlas rockets in favor of its newly developed Vulcan rocket, which made its inaugural flight in January carrying a privately funded moon lander.

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