Delta 4 Spy Satellite Rocket Launch Beats the North Korean Missile Tests by a Week

June 27, 2006 - San Fernando Valley

At about 9pm I looked outside to see a bright blue-to-UV-purple cloud suspended high in the sky. At first, I thought I was looking at a large section of cloud cover thinning in the middle with the light blue evening sky showing through, but then I saw that it was the reverse, the only cloud in that part of the sky at all! I started using my digital camera to take the pictures and noticed, more so than normal, particles sparkling in the air each time the flash went off (aluminum dust?). Because it was actually glowing in blue and purple colors (for a good fifteen minutes) I figured it must be a rocket plume up in space. Finally I got a break as to what it was, nearly two weeks later I was talking with a gentlemen on an airplane and he told me that from the beach you could see the satellite launch and it was announced on the radio.

In the past week a lot of political focus has been brought on North Korea as they appear to be in the final stages of fueling a ballistic missile while simultaneously announcing to the world that they will be testing a nuclear weapon within a month. As of June 19th, 2006 Japan has been urging North Korea to stop its attempt to launch a ballistic missile, according to Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. And on June 27th (today) China and South Korea have joined in to convince South Korea to stand down any testing. On June 23, 2006 Japan and the US agreed to cooperate on a missile defense shield and (today again) the US government approved the sale of $111 Million to North Korea for 48 Raytheon surface-to-air defensive missiles.

As it turned out, the plume in the photos below are from the 1st successful launch of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program delivering the payload of a SIGNIT satellite into space one week in advance of the July 5th, 2006 North Korean missile tests. Did the US want a better view?

"We have a missile defense system ... what we call a long-range missile defense system that is basically a research, development, training, test kind of system..[sounds like a mad science experiment to me!] It does ... have some limited operational capability [in other words, it doesn't just bake you a cake] . And the purpose, of course, of a missile defense system is to defend .... the territory of the United States from attack. [why don't I believe you?]" - National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley