The Air Force says it successfully launched a Delta II rocket carrying an Italian radar satellite into space Oct. 24 from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. “People don’t always think about it, but this is rocket science, and our airmen and industry partners make it look easy,” Col. David Buck, commander of Vandenberg’s 30th Space Wing and the spacelift commander for this mission, said in a release from the base yesterday. Impressively, the airmen of Space Launch Complex 2 were able to conduct this mission just six weeks after completing the launch of the GeoEye-1 imagery satellite in September. SLC-2 crews have traditionally had about three or four months between missions.
Special-ops aviators, a physicist from the intelligence community, and an enlisted Marine with decades of deployments: U.S. Space Command’s military and civilian leaders who spoke May 7 were as likely to come from strictly space backgrounds as not. These are some of the day’s insights from inside the command, which…