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.
ULA is retiring its Atlas and Delta rocket lines with the debut of the company’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is scheduled to blast off for the first time next year.
An Atlas 5 rocket standing on a launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, set for liftoff Monday with the Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite, is one of 29 Atlas 5s remaining in ULA’s inventory. Jessica Rye, a ULA spokesperson, confirmed last month that all 29 Atlas 5s have been sold to customers for future launches.
ULA received its final shipment of RD-180 engines from Russia earlier this year. A dual-nozzle RD-180 engine, made in Russia by NPO Energomash, powers the first stage of each Atlas 5 rocket, generating around 860,000 pounds of thrust at full throttle while guzzling kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants.
The new Vulcan Centaur will be driven by twin U.S.-made BE-4 main engines from Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. ULA says the Vulcan Centaur will have more lift capability, additional mission flexibility, and will be cheaper to operate than the existing Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rocket families.
There are three Delta 4 rockets left to fly on ULA’s schedule.
The Landsat 9 mission is the latest in a series of environmental satellites developed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The new mission is designed for a lifetime of at least five years, extending an unbroken data record of global land images that dates back to the launch of the first Landsat satellite in 1972.
Developed for a bit less than $750 million, Landsat 9 is a near-clone of the Landsat 8 satellite launched in 2013. The spacecraft was built by Northrop Grumman, with instruments from Ball Aerospace and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
With two Landsat satellites operating simultaneously, the constellation will observe all of Earth’s land surfaces every eight days, returning pictures used to track agriculture, forests, coastal waters, and urban growth. Landsat data are also widely used to monitor water sources in the Western United States.
“It tells us about vegetation, land use, coastlines, and surface water, just to name a few,” said Karen St. Germain, head of NASA’s Earth science division. “But the power is really unleashed when we combine the data from Landsat with our other Earth science missions. That can tell us just not what is happening, but also why.”
“Landsat is our most economically impactful Earth science mission,” St. Germain said.
Liftoff is timed for 11:12 a.m. PDT (2:12 p.m. EDT; 1812 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 3-East at Vandenberg, a military base around 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The expendable Atlas 5 rocket will fly in…
Read More News: Monday launch from California begins countdown to Atlas 5 retirement – Spaceflight
