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.
The preliminary weather forecast for Tuesday evening’s Atlas 5 rocket launch carrying a Navy communications satellite predicts a 60 percent chance of acceptable conditions, with thick clouds the main threat against flying at 7:43 p.m. EST as scheduled.
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.
Video highlights of the 50th Atlas 5 flight. The United Launch Alliance rocket carried the eighth Global Positioning System (GPS 2F-8) satellite for the U.S. Air Force.
Launching for the 50th time, an Atlas 5 rocket flew a milestone mission Wednesday in deploying a Global Positioning System satellite for the worldwide utility.
Launching new Global Positioning System navigation satellites at a rate not seen in 21 years, this year’s fourth such deployment is coming up at midday Wednesday, Oct. 29 by an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral.
The booster rocket that will launch NASA’s next-generation Orion space capsule on a two-orbit, four-hour shakedown cruise in December has been rolled to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
Rocketing through gloomy skies with a payload clouded in a veil of secrecy, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket fired away from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday to deploy a satellite thousands of miles above Earth.