Richard T. Par
Last night, I drove back to Summitridge Park in the city of Diamond Bar to see another SpaceX launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, California. Unlike the five previous Falcon 9 flights that I witnessed this year, yesterday's launch sent a classified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)—and not Starlink satellites—to Earth orbit!
It was at 8:14 PM, PDT, that a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the NROL-186 payload lifted off from Vandenberg's Space Launch Complex 4 East pad on the Central California coastline. While SpaceX's webcast of the launch ended (at the request of NRO) right after the Falcon 9's first stage booster touched down on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship waiting out in the Pacific Ocean, a couple of other spectators at Summitridge Park and I continued to observe as the second stage engine attached to last night's spacecraft made its way across the SoCal sky.
As shown in the fifth and grainy pic below (captured by my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera), I was able to watch the first stage booster conduct its reentry burn while disappearing in the horizon! Yesterday's photos were taken with both my DSLR camera and Google Pixel 4A phone.
Just like the other launch that I saw from Diamond Bar back in April, the Falcon 9's contrail wasn't as bright as the previous launch six days ago because liftoff occurred only minutes after sunset. It's all good.
I wasn't even expecting to get such a great view of yesterday's launch because I thought that the flight trajectory for the NROL-186 mission was going to be significantly different from those used for the SoCal Starlink launches. Thank God I was wrong!
As usual, I look forward to the next evening launch by SpaceX from Santa Barbara County. Happy Saturday!
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
Richard T. Par
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