Mission Reports

Shrouded in a veil of fog, an Atlas 5 rocket fired away from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Monday with the Landsat 9 remote sensing satellite.

NASA and United Launch Alliance deployed a new Landsat satellite in orbit Monday after liftoff on an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, marking the 2,000th launch from the West Coast spaceport since 1958 and extending a series of Earth observations used by farmers, urban planners, and climate scientists.

A United Launch Atlas 5 rocket is set for launch with the Landsat 9 satellite, a joint project between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, and four small CubeSat rideshare payloads.

NASA and United Launch Alliance launched the Landsat 9 satellite aboard an Atlas 5 rocket Monday at 11:12 a.m. PDT (2:12 p.m. EDT; 1812 GMT) from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The new satellite, developed in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, will extend an unbroken nearly 50-year record of environmental images.

The launch of a Landsat environmental monitoring satellite Monday from California’s Central Coast will be the first liftoff of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket since the company confirmed there will be 29 more Atlas 5 flights before the Atlas family’s retirement.