At midnight (12:01am Wednesday) there is a planned Minuteman launch out of Vandenberg. They’re pretty cool to watch; the weather was good for the last one in February. That launch and this one are operational readiness tests, a pretty brisk cadence that I’m sure has nothing
at all to do with sending Russia, China and NK a message.
I happen to be in the trajectory plane for a lob at Kwajalein. So the missile heads straight up from this vantage. The last one was moonlit, so I got to see the big puff of exhaust when stage 3 ended propulsion with some fuel left to burn. The stage is fitted with four shaped charges that open up the motor, since there’s no putting out a solid-fuel rocket.
They’re calling for partly cloudy, unfortunately.
The test launch of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile is scheduled for this week from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
www.ksby.com
well, I set the alarm for 11:50 and sat vigil from midnight to 12:44 when I said hang it. Launch window was til 6:01 am, but they tend to launch within minutes of it opening.
At 5:12 am I looked woozily out the window and thought I was looking at a star —
but I lucked onto the last seconds of stage 3 burn above a band of cloud.
The “star” gave two nice twinkles 1/2 second apart, then was gone, but there was a smudge in the sky.
Eastern horizon showed the beginnings of daybreak, which meant the sun was above -18° altitude, and the smudge, which was visibly spreading and dimming, was maybe 25° up, so in sunlight.
(At thrust termination, the vehicle is approx. 150 nm high and 270 nm downrange, so maybe 450 miles from me.)
The smudge took on a semicircular shape, suggesting a spherical expansion bounded below by atmosphere. Maybe you can see it; black out the rest of the screen. The bright star is Arcturus. Above it (and a bit right) is epsilon Boötis, eleven degrees of arc distant. Below right, on the edge of the smoky hemisphere is eta Boötis.
The cloud is no more than two minutes old and over a hundred miles (projected) across. A minute later it faded into background.
(edit) it’s daylight now and the thing is washed out. You need a dark place to view. There was no trace of a smoke trail; sometimes those persist for an hour or so.