SPACE reports, “NASA’s Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) mission — named for the Egyptian god of darkness and enemy of the sun god, Ra — will launch the three sounding rockets back into the moon’s shadow during the April 8 total solar eclipse. The goal is to study potential disturbances in the ionosphere during a solar eclipse.” Launch is scheduled between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
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Tag: Virginia
Rocket Lab Launches NROL-123 Mission in 4th US Liftoff
SPACE reports, “Rocket Lab launched from the U.S. for the fourth time ever Thursday morning (March 21), sending mystery payloads aloft for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).” The NROL-123 mission, or “Live and Let Fly,” as Rocket Lab has designated it, launched at 3:25 a.m. EDT from the company’s Launch Complex 2 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
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Videos
RocketLab Electron 46 | NROL-123
(The Launch Pad; YouTube)
Rocket Lab Launches First US Mission
Reuters reports that Rocket Lab “launched its first mission from American soil on Tuesday, kicking off an expansion of the company’s launch business that adds to a surge in private rocket activity at U.S. space ports.” The Long Beach, California-based company’s workhorse “Electron rocket, an expendable launcher standing 40 feet (12 meters) tall, lifted off at 6 p.m. EST from its new launch pad at the NASA-operated Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.” The mission “marked Rocket Lab’s first outside its flagship launchsite on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, where the company has carried out all 32 previous Electron missions since the rocket’s debut in 2017.”
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Video
Rocket Lab Launches First Electron mission from Virginia, Tuesday, January 24, at 6 p.m. EST from Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.
(NASASpaceflight; YouTube)
DroneUp Will Expand Presence in Virginia, Create 655 Jobs
The AP reports that DroneUp announced Wednesday it “will invest $7 million to expand its Virginia Beach headquarters, creating 510 new jobs.” The company will “also invest $20.2 million to establish a new testing, training, and research and development center for drone operators at Richard Bland College.” That project is “expected to create 145 new jobs.” Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) said, “This is an impressive and highly impactful project for Virginia Beach, Dinwiddie County, and beyond that represents a new age of technology for our society, and DroneUp is at the forefront of Unmanned Aircraft System development.”
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Boeing to Move Headquarters to Arlington, Develop Northern Virginia Research Hub
Inside Defense reports that The Boeing Company is planning to “move its global headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, VA.” In addition, the company said Thursday it will “develop a research & technology hub in the area to harness and attract engineering and technical capabilities.” Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said: “We are excited to build on our foundation here in northern Virginia. The region makes strategic sense for our global headquarters given its proximity to our customers and stakeholders, and its access to world-class engineering and technical talent.”
Full Story (Inside Defense)