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Build-up begins for first Minotaur rocket launch from Cape Canaveral
August 4, 2017 Stephen Clark
Ground crews at a long-dormant launch pad at Cape Canaveral are stacking surplus military missile motors for the Aug. 25 launch of a Minotaur 4 rocket with a satellite designed to track orbital traffic thousands of miles above Earth.
The process to construct the Minotaur 4 rocket began with the hoisting of the launcher’s first stage at pad 46 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The lower three solid-fueled stages of the Minotaur 4 come from the Air Force’s stockpile of decommissioned Peacekeeper missiles deployed in the 1980s to hurl nuclear weapons to targets around the world.
A spokesperson for Orbital ATK, which operates the Minotaur family in agreement with the U.S. Air Force, confirmed stacking of the Minotaur 4 booster recently started at Cape Canaveral.
Liftoff is set for Aug. 25 at 11:15 p.m. EDT (0315 GMT on Aug. 26), the opening of a four-hour launch window.
More:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/08/04/build-up-begins-for-first-minotaur-rocket-launch-from-cape-canaveral/
