The Dec. 11 blastoff of one of the most powerful rockets ever launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia could also boost the region's ambition to become a commercial spaceport.
With good weather, the morning flight of the 69-foot, four-stage Minotaur I rocket should be visible for hundreds of miles as it rises to place two satellites into an orbit 254 miles high.
If it's successful, the spacecraft will be the first in 21 years to reach orbit from Wallops Island, just south of Assateague Island. The last attempt, in 1995, ended in a spectacular, explosive failure 48 seconds after liftoff.
The December launch will also be the inaugural flight from the little-known Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS).
The commercial launch pad was built on NASA property in 1998 by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority. Maryland joined the venture in 2004 to help spur growth of the aerospace and launch service industries on both sides of the state line.
Launch preparations at MARS have generated as many as 100 jobs in the area, according to Aris Melissaratos, Maryland's secretary of business and economic development. And he hopes that's just a beginning.
"We'll see it grow," he said.
The Air Force says it has contracted for two more Minotaur launches from MARS in 2007, and others are in development for liftoff in 2009.
"I believe there's the potential for launches out of Wallops that would resupply the International Space Station after the [space] shuttle has outlived its usefulness," Melissaratos said.
That could eventually mean six to eight launches per year with heavy-lift rockets - Delta-class vehicles more than three times the size of the Minotaur 1, said Spaceport Manager Rick Baldwin.
"That's quite a change," he said. "It would be a phenomenal benefit for the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia, and both states in total."
But first, MARS' inaugural customer, Orbital Sciences Inc. of Dulles, Va., will have to get the Minotaur's two satellites into orbit.
One is an 814-pound Air Force "micro-satellite" called TacSat2. Its $18 million mission is to demonstrate that the Air Force can design a satellite, build it and get it launched and operational - all in just 15 months.
Today's military satellites can take 10 years or more from concept to launch, at a cost in the billions. And they soon become technologically obsolete.
