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On Tuesday, the United Launch Alliance sent a classified U. S. military payload into orbit with an Atlas V rocket for the final time, ending the Pentagon’s use of Russian rocket engines in the transition from national security missions to space vehicles. All-American launch.
The Atlas V rocket lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida at 6:45 a. m. m. EDT (10:45 a. m. UTC) on Tuesday, powered by a Russian-made RD-180 engine and five solid-fuel thrusters in their strongest configuration. This is the 101st launch of an Atlas V rocket since its debut in 2002, and the 58th and final Atlas V project with a U. S. national security payload. Since 2007.
The U. S. Space Force’s Space Systems CommandThe U. S. Coast Guard showed off the good fortune of the mission, dubbed USSF-51, on Tuesday afternoon. The rocket’s top Centaur tier jettisoned the top-secret USSF-51 payload about seven hours after liftoff, most likely at a high level. geostationary altitude orbit over the equator. The military has released precise specifications of the rocket’s target orbit.
“What a launch and what a fitting conclusion to our new National Security Space Atlas V (launch),” Walt Lauderdale, USSF-51 project manager at Space Systems Command, said in a post-launch news release. wishes since our first launch in 2007, illustrates the hard work and determination of our country’s business base. Together, we have achieved this, and thanks to groups like this, we have maximum success and a successful launching industry. world, without exception. “
Tuesday morning’s launch marks the end of an era that began in the 1990s, when U. S. government policy allowed Lockheed Martin, the original developer of the Atlas V, to use Russian rocket engines in its first stage. In the first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was widespread sentiment that the United States and other Western countries were partnering with Russia to keep the country’s aerospace personnel on the task and prevent “rogue states” like Iran or North Korea from hiring them.
At the time, the Pentagon was purchasing new rockets to upgrade older versions of the Atlas, Delta, and Titan rocket families, which had been in service since the late 1950s or early 1960s.
In the end, the Air Force chose Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V rocket and Boeing’s Delta IV rocket to progress in 1998. The Atlas V, with its main Russian engine, was less expensive than the Delta IV and the more successful of the two models. After Tuesday’s launch, another 15 Atlas V rockets are set aside to carry payloads for advertising consumers and NASA, primarily for Amazon’s Kuiper Array and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Delta IV’s 45th and final launch took place in April.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged their rocket divisions in 2006 to form a 50:50 joint venture called United Launch Alliance, which has become the only contractor qualified to launch giant U. S. military satellites into orbit until SpaceX began launching rockets. National security missions in 2018.
SpaceX sued in 2014 to protest the Air Force’s decision to award ULA a multimillion-dollar sole-source contract for 36 Atlas V and Delta IV rocket booster cores. The dispute began shortly after Russia’s military run and annexation of Crimea, leading to US government sanctions against prominent Russian government officials, including then-Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and later the head of the agency. Russian space
Rogozin, known for his belligerent but sometimes ineffective rhetoric, threatened to prevent exports of RD-180 engines intended for the US military’s Atlas V missions. This only occurred when Russia nevertheless prevented engine exports. to the United States in 2022. after its complete control. full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At that point, ULA already had all the engines it needed to fly all of the remaining Atlas V rockets. This export ban further affected Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which also used Russian engines, forcing the development of an entirely new top-tier booster, equipped with American engines.
The SpaceX test, the Russian military’s first incursions into Ukraine in 2014, and the resulting sanctions marked the beginning of the end of the Atlas V rocket and ULA’s use of the Russian RD-180 engine. The dual-nozzle RD-180, manufactured by a Russian company called NPO Energomash, consumes kerosene and liquid oxygen and generates 860,000 pounds of thrust at full speed.
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