The Delta 5000 series was an American

expendable launch system An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are destroyed during reentry or impact with Earth, or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of s ...

which was used to conduct an

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an ...

al launch in 1989. It was a member of the

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet * D (NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta"), the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * Delta Air Lines, a major US carrier ...

family of rockets. Although several variants were put forward, only the Delta 5920 was launched. The designation used a four digit numerical code to store information on the configuration of the rocket. It was built from a combination of spare parts left over from earlier Delta rockets, which were being retired, and parts from the

Delta II Delta II was an expendable launch system, originally designed and built by McDonnell Douglas, and sometimes known as the Thorad Delta 1. Delta II was part of the Delta rocket family, derived directly from the Delta 3000, and entered service in ...

6000-series, which was just entering service. The first stage was the

RS-27 The RS-27 (Rocket System-27) was a liquid-propellant rocket engine developed in 1974 by Rocketdyne to replace the aging Rocketdyne S-3D, MB-3 in the Delta. Incorporating components of the venerable MB-3 and the Rocketdyne H-1, H-1 designs, the ...

powered

Extended Long Tank Thor Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (proof theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values t ...

, flown on several earlier Delta rockets. Nine Castor-4A

solid rocket booster A solid rocket booster (SRB) is a solid propellant motor used to provide thrust in spacecraft launches from initial launch through the first ascent. Many launch vehicles, including the Atlas V, SLS and Space Shuttle, have used SRBs to give laun ...

s were attached to increase thrust at lift-off, replacing the less powerful

Castor-4 Castor is a family of solid-fuel rocket stages and boosters built by Thiokol (now Northrop Grumman) and used on a variety of launch vehicles. They were initially developed as the second-stage motor of the Scout rocket. The design was based on t ...

boosters used on the 3000 series. The

Delta-K The Delta-K was an American rocket stage, developed by McDonnell Douglas and Aerojet. It was first used on 27 August 1989 as the second stage for the Delta 4000 series. It continued to serve as the second stage for subsequent variants of the ...

was used as a second stage. In the configuration that was launched, no third stage was flown. The Delta 5000 was launched just once, from Space Launch Complex 2W at the

Vandenberg Air Force Base Vandenberg may refer to: * Vandenberg (surname), including a list of people with the name * USNS ''General Hoyt S. Vandenberg'' (T-AGM-10), transport ship in the United States Navy, sank as an artificial reef in Key West, Florida * Vandenberg S ...

. Launch occurred at 14:34 on 18 November 1989. It was successful, and placed the

Cosmic Background Explorer The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE ), also referred to as Explorer 66, was a NASA satellite dedicated to cosmology, which operated from 1989 to 1993. Its goals were to investigate the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB or CMBR) of th ...

(COBE) spacecraft into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

Payload

References

{{Thor and Delta rockets Delta (rocket family)