{"id":465,"date":"2009-08-17T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T17:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/?p=465"},"modified":"2017-09-10T12:38:30","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T16:38:30","slug":"the-end-of-an-era-last-delta-ii-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/the-end-of-an-era-last-delta-ii-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"The end of an era: Last Delta II (GPS) Launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Update:\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 The media tricked me again.\u00a0 This was the last GPS launch of Delta II, not the last launch of Delta II.\u00a0 There are still apparently a handful of more Delta II launches planned.\u00a0 Sorry for propagating my own confusion. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This morning a little after 6:30am, the very last Delta II rocket blasted off from Florida&#8217;s Space Coast carrying a GPS satellite into a successful orbit. According to local news reports, the newest GPS satellites are wider and heavier and will be launched from larger Atlas V or Delta IV rockets. Delta II rockets have been launching on the Space Coast for just over 20 years, so this morning&#8217;s event was truly the end of an era.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s a photo of this morning&#8217;s launch from the Florida Today website (click it for full size image):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/finaldeltalaunchphoto.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-468\" title=\"finaldeltalaunchphoto\" src=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/finaldeltalaunchphoto-266x400.jpg\" alt=\"finaldeltalaunchphoto\" width=\"266\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/finaldeltalaunchphoto-266x400.jpg 266w, http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/finaldeltalaunchphoto-682x1024.jpg 682w, http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/finaldeltalaunchphoto.jpg 1067w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 266px) 100vw, 266px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was outside exercising this morning during the launch and caught some low quality photos using my phone (click them for full size images):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-466\" title=\"lastdeltaiilaunch1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch1-400x320.jpg\" alt=\"lastdeltaiilaunch1\" width=\"400\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch1-400x320.jpg 400w, http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch1-1024x819.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch1.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-467\" title=\"lastdeltaiilaunch2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch2-400x320.jpg\" alt=\"lastdeltaiilaunch2\" width=\"400\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch2-400x320.jpg 400w, http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch2-1024x819.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/lastdeltaiilaunch2.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update:\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 The media tricked me again.\u00a0 This was the last GPS launch of Delta II, not the last launch of Delta II.\u00a0 There are still apparently a handful of more Delta II launches planned.\u00a0 Sorry for propagating my own confusion. This morning a little after 6:30am, the very last Delta II rocket blasted off [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108],"tags":[125,76,351,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2964,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/2964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}