Titan 34D

The Titan 34D was an American rocket, used to launch a number of satellites for mostly military applications. After its retirement from military service, a small number were converted to the Commercial Titan III configuration, which included a stretched second stage, and a larger fairing. Several communications satellites, and the NASA Mars Observer spacecraft were launched by commercial Titan 34Ds.

Derived from the Titan III, the Titan 34D featured stretched first and second stages with more-powerful solid boosters. A variety of upper stages were available, including the Inertial Upper Stage, the Transfer Orbit Stage, and the Transtage. The Titan 34D made its maiden flight on 30 October 1982 with two DSCS defense communications satellites for the United States Department of Defense (DOD).

All launches were conducted from either LC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station or SLC-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base. 15 launches were carried out, of which two failed. The first of these was on August 28, 1985 when the core stage suffered a turbo-pump malfunction and was destroyed by Range Safety. The second proved to be one of the worst space launch disasters in US history when on April 18, 1986, an attempted launch of a KH-9 photo reconnaissance satellite ended catastrophically as the right solid rocket booster ruptured and exploded only eight seconds into the flight, destroying the entire vehicle, blowing itself into smithereens and showering SLC4E with debris and toxic propellant.

The disaster drew unfortunately comparisons to the Challenger shuttle accident three months earlier, which was also the victim of a solid rocket motor malfunction. However, the Titan incident was found to have a rather different cause as it had not suffered O-ring burn-through, but instead a failure of the joints holding the SRM segments together.

SLC4E was out of commission until October 1987, after which it hosted the remaining two Titan 34D launches without incident.

Use with Vortex satellites
Three Vortex satellites were launched using Titan 34D vehicles between 1984 and 1989.