{"id":179,"date":"2008-09-26T21:43:57","date_gmt":"2008-09-27T04:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/?p=179"},"modified":"2026-03-06T13:28:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T20:28:46","slug":"vandenberg-space-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/2008\/09\/vandenberg-space-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Vandenberg Space Launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Now, let’s be clear, this is a weblog of developmental cognitive neuroscience. \u00a0Still, those who know me understand that I began my undergraduate career in the aerospace engineering department. \u00a0I have loved space flight since before I could ride a bicycle. \u00a0I made a scrapbook when I was six years old that held every news clipping about the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy – I still have it. \u00a0Even now I love reading books on the Apollo moon landing program and Werner von Braun’s role in the early space program. Call it a hobby – it has always been a source of obsession. Still, in all my years I have never witnessed a live space launch.<\/p>\n

Reason #318 why Santa Barbara is such an awesome place to live is the fact that we are 90 minutes away from Vandenberg Air Force Base<\/a>. \u00a0Vandenberg is a major spaceport in the United States for commercial and military space operations. \u00a0They don’t always post their launch schedule, but enthusiasts from around the world pool their collective knowledge to assemble a rough idea<\/a> of when rockets will be blasting off. In my case I had luck on my side, as a local television station was covering the countdown of a target launch vehicle <\/a>from Vandenberg last Tuesday. I hopped up off the couch and got in the car.<\/p>\n

The mission was related to the NFIRE (Near Field InfraRed Experiment) satellite, which was designed to gather data on the orbital observation of rocket exhaust plumes. To calibrate the sensors on the satellite they needed a, well, rocket exhaust plume. \u00a0The target launch vehicle was a modified Minotaur ballistic missile, which was meant to simulate a ballistic missile launch for the NFIRE satellite.<\/p>\n

My wife and I headed up into the hills of Santa Barbara to see if we could witness the launch. \u00a0Online Vandenberg observation FAQs<\/a> indicated that it should definitely be visible. There was a two hour launch window that corresponded to two overhead passes of the NFIRE satellite (see above picture). \u00a0We barely made it in time – as the satellite made its first pass, but we saw nothing but a few shooting stars. \u00a0By looking at the orbital data for the NFIRE sat online<\/a> (yea iPhone!) I knew the next satellite pass would begin at 11:57pm. \u00a0Sure enough, at 11:58 we saw a bright orange light coming up from the horizon and blazing up into the night. \u00a0Compared to your Fourth of July fireworks it wasn’t very special, but the knowledge that it was leaving the Earth’s atmosphere was about the coolest thing I have seen in a while.<\/p>\n

Cheers to spaceflight everybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now, let’s be clear, this is a weblog of developmental cognitive neuroscience. \u00a0Still, those who know me understand that I began my undergraduate career in the aerospace engineering department. \u00a0I have loved space flight since before I could ride a bicycle. \u00a0I made a scrapbook when I was six years old that held every news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefrontal.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}