Story highlights The new National Reconnaissance Office satellite was launched Wednesday

The satellite is thought to be capable of taking extremely detailed photos

It's being carried aloft by the biggest rocket in the U.S. inventory

A massive rocket carrying a new U.S. spy satellite lifted off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base Wednesday.

Details about the satellite, designated NROL-65, are classified. But the three-booster Delta-IV rocket used to send it aloft Wednesday is the heaviest in the U.S. inventory, capable of putting a 25-ton payload into low Earth orbit.

It's one of two launches the top-secret National Reconnaissance Office has on the books for late 2013, NRO Director Betty Sapp told a congressional committee in April.

The payload in Wednesday's launch is thought to be "a $1-billion high-powered spy satellite capable of snapping pictures detailed enough to distinguish the make and model of an automobile hundreds of miles below," the Los Angeles Times reported

The 232-foot-tall booster was developed by the U.S. Air Force and the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

NROL-65 is the second launch from Vandenberg of the Delta IV Heavy. The first was in January 2011.