After Delays from Five Fires, Vandenberg Finally Launches Rocket

After five separate fires swept Vandenberg Air Force Base in September, the launch facility received a “green” ready-to-go signal for the successful 11/11 liftoff of an Atlas V rocket carrying a Lockheed Martin DigitalGlobe WorldView-4 satellite. Base crews cleaned up fire retardant, washed and repaired power lines to restore redundant systems, and tested the launch facilities and infrastructure before range operations could commence. The satellite will circuit the sky every 90 minutes and provide high-resolution commercial imagery, including contributions to a 15-year library of time-lapse images, over more than 680,000 square kilometers of the Earth’s surface daily.