RUSHED, SURPRISE #ROCKET LAUNCH: There was no warning. On Thursday night at 7:28 pm PDT, a Firefly Alpha rocket lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It carried an unusual #satellite named "Victus Nox." Stephen Hummel saw the launch more than a thousand miles away at the McDonald Observatory in Texas:

"A bright exhaust cone expanded to cover a large area of the sky during astronomical darkness," says Hummel. "After the cone faded, there was a slight red afterglow" probably caused by the rocket #punching a #hole in the #ionosphere.

Latin for "conquer the night", Victus Nox is a US Space Force experiment, testing the ability of Firefly Alpha to launch a #military satelite with only 24 hours notice--a so-called "responsive #launch." In the past, typical Defense Department launches took anywhere from two to five years. The last responsive #space #experiment, the June 13, 2021 launch of TacRL-2, required 21 days.

Alpha Firefly successfully launched Victus Nox only 27 hours after it received a "go" notice. The extra 3 hours was a result of a #weather delay. The mini-fridge-sized satellite will now provide "space domain awareness" data to the Space #Force.
#DEW ?