ULA Launches Secondary Payload on Delta IV Rocket; Jim Sponnick Comments

United Launch Alliance has launched the AFSPC-4 mission aboard a Delta IV rocket as part of the U.S. Air Force‘s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program to deliver military and government payloads to space.

ULA said Tuesday that the launch, its 85th since December 2006, was supported by an Aerojet Rocketdyne engine and ATK rocket motors.

“The ULA team is proud to have delivered the twin Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) spacecraft to orbit today,” said Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president for Atlas and Delta programs.

GSSAP spacecraft will support the space surveillance operations of the U.S. Strategic Command and the space situational awareness data collection of the Joint Functional Component Command for Space.

The mission also brought the Air Force Research Laboratory‘s Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space satellite to near-geosyn­chronous orbit, which Sponnick noted makes it the first EELV secondary payload adapter on a Delta rocket launch.