The United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket and NASA’s four MMS satellite probes passed their Flight Readiness Review on Friday that assessed the progress of work and affirmed plans to launch next Thursday night.
Work on Boeing’s CST-100 commercial crew capsule will ramp up at the program’s new home base in Florida this year, with construction of a crew access tower at the Atlas 5 rocket’s launch pad underway and assembly of a spacecraft test article due to begin in a converted space shuttle hangar.
A powerful Atlas 5 rocket fitted with a kerosene-burning main engine and five solid-fueled boosters lit up Florida’s Space Coast with Tuesday night’s blastoff carrying a U.S. Navy communications satellite into orbit. We present a sample of launch photos submitted by Spaceflight Now’s readers.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket fitted with five powerful solid-fueled boosters has lifted off from a seaside launch complex at Cape Canaveral with the U.S. Navy’s third Mobile User Objective System communications satellite.
The 200th Atlas-Centaur rocket, history some 52 years in the making, will blast off Tuesday from Cape Canaveral to deliver a U.S. Navy mobile communications satellite into orbit.
Up to 24 launches are planned from Cape Canaveral in 2015, thanks to jam-packed manifests for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance to send up satellites for the U.S. military, NASA and commercial telecom operators.
There were more successful space launches in 2014 than in any year since 1992, with Russia, the United States and China responsible for more than 80 percent of global launch activity.
Navigation satellites, communications spacecraft, classified missions, NASA science projects and the Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo ship destined for the International Space Station are on the United Launch Alliance manifest for the new year.
A record number of Atlas 5 launches, the return of Delta 2 and a Delta 4-Heavy at the dawn of a new space exploration era highlighted 2014 for United Launch Alliance.