December 13, 2025
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Breaking News
  • [ December 12, 2025 ] Study: Current, future megaconstellations risk space-based astronomy News
  • [ December 11, 2025 ] SpaceX breaks launch pad turnaround record with flight of Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Falcon 9
  • [ December 10, 2025 ] SpaceX launches 160th Falcon 9 rocket of 2025 Falcon 9
  • [ December 9, 2025 ] SpaceX launches classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office Falcon 9
  • [ December 9, 2025 ] Soyuz safely lands in Kazakhstan Mission Reports

Video: Missile alert satellite launches atop Atlas 5

January 21, 2017 Justin Ray

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, standing 189 feet tall and and weighing 720,000 pounds, unleashes 860,000 pounds of thrust from its main engine to launch the SBIRS GEO Flight 3 early-warning satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Launch preparations

See earlier SBIRS GEO Flight 3 coverage.

Our Atlas archive.

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Related Articles

Atlas 5

Atlas 5 rocket launches satellite to bring high-speed Internet to more Americans

December 18, 2016 Justin Ray

The world’s highest capacity broadband satellite, a craft that will connect rural America to high-speed Internet service, successfully rocketed into space today aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 booster.

Atlas 5

Snapshots from Atlas 5 launch

March 13, 2015 Justin Ray

The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off Thursday night with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale satellite quartet in a successful flight from Cape Canaveral.

Mission Reports

Prototypes for new Chinese crew capsule and space station arrive at launch site

January 24, 2020 Stephen Clark

The next flight of China’s heavy-lift Long March 5 rocket will debut a new configuration designed to launch modules for a Chinese space station. But a demonstration launch of the Long March 5B booster scheduled as soon as April will instead carry a prototype of China’s next-generation deep space crew capsule into orbit on an unpiloted test flight.

News Headlines

  • Study: Current, future megaconstellations risk space-based astronomy
    December 12, 2025
  • SpaceX breaks launch pad turnaround record with flight of Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
    December 11, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 160th Falcon 9 rocket of 2025
    December 10, 2025
  • SpaceX launches classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office
    December 9, 2025
  • Soyuz safely lands in Kazakhstan
    December 9, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 3,000th Starlink satellite in 2025 on record-setting 32nd flight of Falcon 9 booster
    December 7, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg SFB
    December 7, 2025
  • International Space Station prepares for new commander, heads into final five years of planned operations
    December 5, 2025
  • SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg SFB
    December 4, 2025
  • Orion hatch ‘blemish’ delays launch day rehearsal for Artemis 2 astronauts
    December 4, 2025
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  • Members
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