# VELA NUCLEAR RADIATION DETECTION SATELLITE MISSION REPORT TITAN IIIC 55914

Made by the U.S. Air Force's Eastern Test Range, this rarely seen film shows the launch of the special Vela satellite designed to detect radiation from nuclear tests. The film shows the Titan IIIC launch vehicle used in the program with a specific focus on the C-18 / Vela - VB mission. This was the last of the Vela satellites, launched on April 8, 1970. The Titan IIIC shown was the 100th launched at the Eastern Test Range. The Titan IIIC consisted of a two-stage Titan core and upper stage called the Titan Transtage, both burning hypergolic liquid fuel, and two large UA1205 solid rocket boosters. Vela was the name of a group of satellites developed as the Vela Hotel element of Project Vela by the United States to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the Soviet Union. Vela started out as a small budget research program in 1959. It ended 26 years later as a successful, cost-effective military space system, which also provided scientific data on natural sources of space radiation. In the 1970s, the nuclear detection mission was taken over by the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. In the late 1980s, it was augmented by the Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The program is now called the Integrated Operational Nuclear Detection System (IONDS). The total number of satellites built was 12, six of the Vela Hotel design and six of the Advanced Vela design. The Vela Hotel series was to detect nuclear initiations in space, while the…

- Kind: Film
- Genres: Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/55914LaunchMissionReport)
- Licence or status: none stated by the archive
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/55914LaunchMissionReport?play=1)