Liquid Oxygen Loading Begins for Centaur

Supercold liquid oxygen is flowing into the tank of the Centaur upper stage for today’s launch. The Centaur’s single RL10 engine, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, burns a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to generate thrust. The Centaur will perform three burns today to place NOAA’s GOES-R satellite into a transfer orbit that will be circularized by the spacecraft into an operational orbit, called geostationary or geosynchronous, more than 22,000 miles above Earth.