{"id":45908,"date":"2023-09-11T18:06:47","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T10:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ulas-atlas-v-rocket-has-launched-for-the-first-time-in-nearly-a-year\/"},"modified":"2023-09-11T18:06:47","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T10:06:47","slug":"ulas-atlas-v-rocket-has-launched-for-the-first-time-in-nearly-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ulas-atlas-v-rocket-has-launched-for-the-first-time-in-nearly-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"ULA\u2019s Atlas V rocket has launched for the first time in nearly a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas V rocket returned to action Sunday with a mission to deploy multiple satellites into geosynchronous orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office and the US Space Force.<\/p>\n

This mission ended a 10-month gap in launches for ULA\u2019s primary rocket, the longest period between Atlas V launches in 20 years as the company winds down the Atlas V program in favor of the new Vulcan rocket. There are still 18 more Atlas V flights on ULA\u2019s launch schedule\u2014all are reserved by customers\u2014primarily carrying satellites for Amazon\u2019s Kuiper broadband network and launching astronauts on Boeing\u2019s long-delayed Starliner crew capsule.<\/p>\n

ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has several Atlas V rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral. Customer delays are the main reason ULA hasn\u2019t launched any Atlas V rockets since last November. At one point, Boeing\u2019s Starliner crew capsule was supposed to launch with astronauts for the first time on top of an Atlas V rocket earlier this year, but that test flight is now delayed into 2024. Another US Space Force mission has also been delayed for months and now likely won\u2019t fly until early 2024.<\/p>\n

The mission that launched Sunday for the NRO, which owns the US government\u2019s fleet of spy satellites, was delayed from August 29 to allow ULA to move the rocket back to its hangar for shelter from Hurricane Idalia. The NRO is usually tight-lipped about its super-secret space missions, but the spy satellite agency decided to open up a bit about this launch. The satellites on-board the Atlas V mission, which the NRO called \u201cSilent Barker,\u201d will track the movements of other spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, with a special emphasis on Chinese and Russian satellite activity.<\/p>\n

Finally, with the Atlas V back on the launch pad, the rocket ignited its Russian-made RD-180 main engine and five strap-on solid-fueled boosters at 8:47 am EDT (12:47 UTC) Monday to climb away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The 196-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket arced toward the east through a clear sky, then jettisoned its five boosters to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. A few moments later, the Atlas V released its payload fairing, then its first stage separated to allow a Centaur upper stage to continue accelerating into orbit.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Multiple burns by the Centaur upper stage\u2019s RL10 engine, made by Aerojet Rocketdyne, placed the satellites for the NRO and the Space Force into an orbit close to geosynchronous altitude roughly 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) over the equator. It took about six hours for the rocket to deploy the payloads into the proper orbit, and officials declared success Sunday afternoon. These missions directly to geosynchronous orbits are particularly challenging, and SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy and ULA\u2019s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets are the only US launch vehicles currently flying that have demonstrated their ability to accomplish this task.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe specialize in complex high-energy orbits, and the team is proud to have launched this mission direct to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) to meet our nation\u2019s space protection needs,\u201d said Gary Wentz, ULA\u2019s vice president of government and commercial programs, in a post-launch press release.<\/p>\n

Atlas V will fly for many more years<\/h2>\n

ULA has spent nearly a decade trying to wean itself off of the Russian engines that power the Atlas V rocket. The number of Atlas V rockets left for ULA to fly\u201418\u2014was determined by the number of Russian RD-180 engines left in ULA\u2019s inventory. The new Vulcan rocket will have methane-fueled BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos\u2019s space company.<\/p>\n

While the Atlas V has a finite number of launches remaining, it\u2019s likely that the rocket will still be in service as the 2020s draw to a close. That\u2019s because Boeing\u2019s Starliner crew capsule is slated to launch seven times on Atlas V rockets, with one crew test flight followed by six operational crew rotation missions to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

Once Starliner is operational, NASA plans to alternate between SpaceX\u2019s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing\u2019s Starliner for crew transportation services to the space station. With space station expeditions lasting about six months, on average, that means Starliner will fly about once per year. That could put the final Starliner flight on the current contract in 2030, when NASA and its partners currently plan to decommission the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

While it doesn\u2019t seem ideal to keep a legacy rocket program flying when its replacement will presumably be launching on a regular basis, ULA says this isn\u2019t such a big deal. The final slate of Atlas V missions will use the same launch pad as the new Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral, and the company says it can support launches on a cadence of every two weeks or so without any major reconfiguration at the launch site.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An Atlas V rocket departs Cape Canaveral on Sunday morning. This was the first Atlas V launch since Nov. 10, 2022.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The launch Sunday was the 98th Atlas V mission overall and the final Atlas V launch for the NRO. That leaves just two Atlas V rockets left to fly for customers other than Boeing and Amazon, which has reserved nine Atlas Vs for its initial batches of Internet satellites for the Kuiper broadband network. The first of those missions for Amazon will launch in early October. Viasat and the Space Force each have one Atlas V flight remaining on contract.<\/p>\n

ULA\u2019s other rocket, the Delta IV, will retire next year after one additional mission for the NRO.<\/p>\n

A watchdog in geosynchronous orbit<\/h2>\n

The government-owned surveillance satellites that launched Sunday morning will enter service over the next few months to begin monitoring traffic in geosynchronous orbit, a popular location for numerous military and commercial spacecraft. In that orbit, a satellite flies around Earth at the same rate as the planet\u2019s rotation, giving a spacecraft a constant view of the same geographic region. This is particularly useful for missions like communications and data relay, military early warning, and weather observation.<\/p>\n

The Silent Barker mission will help track potential threats to multibillion-dollar Space Force and NRO satellites in geosynchronous orbit, officials said in a press conference before the launch. The NRO broke with its usual policy of not discussing any details of its missions to let adversaries like China and Russia know it has the capability to see what they are doing in orbit.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cGeosynchronous orbit is far away,\u201d said Chris Scolese, director of the NRO. \u201cGround-based systems have a harder time seeing what\u2019s up there. This provides us the capability of being in this same orbit, so that we\u2019re closer to what\u2019s happening up there. It will not be looking at the ground; it will be looking at space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NRO managed the development of the Silent Barker satellites and will operate them in orbit, while the Space Force provided the launch on ULA\u2019s Atlas V rocket.<\/p>\n

The Silent Barker satellites will detect and continually track other objects in geosynchronous orbit, a capability that military leaders have prioritized over the last decade. In that time, Pentagon officials say there has been an escalation in \u201ccat and mouse\u201d games between US satellites and those operated by China and Russia.<\/p>\n

US officials have highlighted several occurrences of Russian inspector satellites approaching US spy satellites flying in low-Earth orbit in recent years. Higher up in geosynchronous orbit, another mysterious Russian military satellite has roamed near numerous commercial communications satellites and a French-Italian military spacecraft, raising concerns that it may be trying to intercept radio signals.<\/p>\n

The US military already has its own satellites capable of approaching other objects in geosynchronous orbit. These satellites, part of the Space Force\u2019s Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP), were part of an orbital dance with two Chinese military satellites last year.<\/p>\n

The US military dispatched one of the GSSAP satellites to get a closer look at the two Chinese spacecraft, but the Chinese satellites took off in opposite directions. One of the Chinese spacecraft then settled into a position to get a sunlit view of the Space Force surveillance satellite that had been chasing it.<\/p>\n

So far, there haven\u2019t been reports that any of these cat-and-mouse games have resulted in either a physical or cyber attack on a US military satellite, but that\u2019s what the Silent Barker mission is designed to guard against.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of the mission is to put a satellite into geosynchronous orbit and then to be looking at that orbital regime and get a sense of what\u2019s happening day to day,\u201d Scolese said. \u201cSatellites do move in geosynchronous orbit. You\u2019ve heard about communications satellites moving from one location to another to provide better coverage to other areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officials have not disclosed what companies were involved in building the Silent Barker satellites or what kind of sensors the spacecraft will use. The exact number of satellites and the budget for the program also remain a secret.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly, we want to be able to see that so we know what\u2019s going on in the area, but we also want to know if something is going on that is unexpected, or shouldn\u2019t be going on, that could potentially represent a threat to a high-value asset, either ours or one of our allies\u2019,\u201d Scolese said.<\/p>\n

He called the Silent Barker mission a \u201cwatchdog\u201d in geosynchronous orbit. That\u2019s similar nomenclature to the \u201cneighborhood watch\u201d description the Space Force has used for the GSSAP satellites. A key difference between the Silent Barker and GSSAP programs, according to military officials, is the ability of the Silent Barker satellites to continually monitor the position, or \u201cmaintain custody,\u201d of other objects in geosynchronous orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Silent Barker is going to do is provide that indication and warning (of a possible threat to a US satellite), so it can inform decisions about what we do or don\u2019t need to do in terms of maneuvers or awareness,\u201d Scolese said.<\/p>\n

US officials are planning at least one more launch with additional Silent Barker satellites in the coming years, allowing the multi-spacecraft constellation to be fully operational in 2026, Scolese said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas V rocket returned to action Sunday with a mission to deploy multiple satellites into geosynchronous orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office and the US Space Force. This mission ended a 10-month gap in launches for ULA\u2019s primary rocket, the longest period between Atlas V launches in 20 years as the company […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7758,25,848,1529,9635,750,2118],"class_list":["post-45908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-atlas-v","tag-launch","tag-national-reconnaissance-office","tag-nrol-107","tag-silent-barker","tag-united-launch-alliance","tag-us-space-force"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}