Update for 8 p.m. ET, Dec. 4: The United Launch Alliance has postponed the launch of the Space Test Program 3 mission STP-3 for the U.S. Space Force to no earlier than Monday, Dec. 6 due to leak in an Rocket Propellant-1 (RP-1) ground system storage tank. Lifoff is set for 4:04 a.m. EST (0904 GMT) on Dec. 6.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — United Launch Alliance (ULA) will launch an Atlas V rocket into space early Sunday morning (Dec. 5), and you can watch the action live online.
The two-stage rocket is scheduled to blast off from Space Launch Complex 41 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 4:04 a.m. EST (0904 GMT), carrying a mix of payloads for the U.S. Space Force on a mission called STP-3 (Space Test Program-3).
You can watch the rocket launch Sunday here at Space.com, courtesy of ULA, or directly via the company.
Related:The history of rockets
The 196-foot-tall (59.7 meters) rocket is set to launch in its most hefty configuration: the 551. This means that the rocket is powered by five strap-on solid rocket motors, a single-engine Centaur upper stage, and its payload is tucked inside a 16.4-foot-wide (5 m) fairing.
This version of the Atlas V has launched a number of high-profile payloads over the years, including NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers.
The rocket rolled out to its launch pad on Friday (Dec. 3), making the 1,800-foot (550 m) journey from ULA’s vertical integration facility to the pad.
Tucked inside the payload fairing are two satellites, each containing a host of technological prototypes and experiments that will be tested in orbit.
Most of the payloads, which are sponsored by the U.S. military’s Space Test Program — a department dedicated to overseeing the Department of Defense’s space-related activities — are classified. However, the larger of the two satellites, known as STPSat-6, is also carrying a novel laser communication payload for NASA.
Also on board is a payload for the National Nuclear Security Administration that is designed to detect nuclear detonations from space.
The smaller “rideshare” satellite, known as LDPE-1 (Long Duration Propulsive EPSA spacecraft), will test a propulsion system in space and other technologies as well.
Sunday morning’s launch will be the 190th overall flight for ULA and the company’s longest mission to date, according to ULA representatives.
“STP-3 is a unique mission, as the Atlas V will deliver STP-3 directly into Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO). This is a highly complex orbital insertion that requires three Centaur burns and precise navigation, a capability unique to the Atlas V,” Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of government and commercial programs, said in a statement. “This is our longest mission to date, at seven hours and 10 minutes until final spacecraft separation.”
The launch comes on the heels of SpaceX’s 27th rocket launch of the year, which blasted off from an adjacent pad on Thursday night (Dec. 2) and delivered 50 satellites to orbit, including 48 of the company’s Starlink internet craft.
Forecasters at the 45th Space Delta have said that there’s a 90% chance of favorable conditions for an on-time liftoff in the early morning hours on Sunday. The weather deteriorates slightly on Monday (Dec. 4) for a planned backup attempt if need be.
In an unprecedented atlas, researchers begin to map how genes are turned on or off in different cells, a step toward better understanding the connections between genetics and disease.
Researchers at University of California San Diego have produced a single-cell chromatin atlas for the human genome. Chromatin is a complex of
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A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket awaits liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with the Landsat 9 satellite. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now
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 aboutvegetation, land use, coastlines, andsurface water, just to namea few,” said Karen St. Germain, head of NASA’s Earth science division. “But the power is really unleashed whenwe combine the datafromLandsat with our other Earth science missions. That can tell usjust notwhat ishappening, butalso why.”
“Landsatis ourmost economicallyimpactful 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 ULA’s basic “401” configuration with a four-meter (13.8-foot) diameter payload fairing, no strap-on solid rocket boosters, and a Centaur upper stage with a single hydrogen-fueled RL10 engine.
It will be the 39th flight of an Atlas 5-401 rocket, and the 88th blastoff of an Atlas 5 rocket overall since its inaugural flight in August 2002. The Atlas 5 placed its payloads into the correct orbit on all but one of the flights, but that mission’s customer, the National Reconnaissance Office, deemed the flight a success.
The Atlas 5-401 is the most-used variant of the Atlas 5 rocket, but just three of the remaining Atlas 5s will use that configuration, including the Landsat 9 mission Monday.
“NASAhas aterrific record flying on Atlas5,” said Tim Dunn, NASA’s launch director for the Landsat 9 mission. “We have launched 19missions on thismagnificentrocket, missions to Pluto, Jupiter, themoon, thesun, the radiation belts, five different spacecraftto Mars.
“We’ve gone to the asteroid Bennu aswell as (launched) three TDRS communications satellites andtwolife-saving GOES weather satellites,” Dunn said in a pre-launch press conference. “Landsat 9 will be the 20th NASAmission on Atlas 5.”
The launch of Landsat 9 will be the 16th Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg. But just one more Atlas 5 remains on ULA’s schedule at the West Coast launch base. That mission, scheduled for September 2022, will deploy a polar-orbiting NOAA weather satellite and an experimental inflatable heat shield developed by NASA to protect spacecraft entering planetary atmospheres, from Earth to other worlds throughout the solar system.
The other 27 Atlas 5 launches on ULA’s books will take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
One “last” that Monday’s mission will achieve is it will be the final daytime Atlas 5 launch from Vandenberg. The launch of NOAA’s JPSS 2 weather satellite next September is expected to occur in nighttime.
To round out the stats for Monday’s launch, it will mark the 300th flight of an Atlas rocket from Vandenberg, and the 2,000th total launch from the California spaceport since 1958.
Ground crews lift the Landsat 9 Earth observation satellite during pre-launch processing at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Anthony Men
The first Vulcan Centaur rockets will take off from Cape Canaveral, but ULA plans to reconfigure the SLC-3E launch pad at Vandenberg for eventual Vulcan missions.
Vandenberg is well-positioned for launches toward the south targeting high-inclination polar orbits. Such orbits are optimized for Earth observation satellites and some communications missions.
ULA’s primary customer is the U.S. government. Missions for NASA, the U.S. Space Force, and the National Reconnaissance Office have taken the lion’s share of Atlas 5 and Delta 4 flights, and make up the bulk of the Vulcan Centaur’s backlog, too.
Formed in 2006 by the merger of Lockheed Martin’s Atlas 5 and Boeing’s Delta 4 rocket programs, ULA has faced increasing competition from SpaceX in the military launch market.
ULA has completed modifications to launch facilities at Cape Canaveral for the Vulcan Centaur rocket. Vulcan flights will take off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape, the same site used by Atlas 5 rockets.
Atlas 5s will continue flying for several more years from Florida’s Space Coast, alternating positions in ULA’s launch schedule with missions using the new Vulcan launcher.
Vandenberg’s final Atlas 5 launch next year will trigger a cutover to the Vulcan program.
“We have two remaining West Coast Atlas 5 missions, Landsat, and then next year we’ll have JPSS, and then that’s the end of Atlas operations on the West Coast,” said Mark Peller, vice president of major development at ULA.
“Because of the unique configuration of the West Coast facilities, we chose to modify them in a way that those modifications won’t be backward compatible,” Peller said in a recent interview with Spaceflight Now. “So once we make the decision to modify for Vulcan, we won’t retain the capability to launch the Atlas.”
ULA is currently designing the modifications to the pad it will implement after the launch of the JPSS 2 weather satellite next year.
“Some of the heavy lifting really has to happen after the JPSS mission, so we’ll go take the pad hard down, spend about a year implementing the final modifications, and we’ll have a repurposed facility out of SLC-3 focused on Vulcan operations,” Peller said.
The Atlas 5 launch pad at Vandenberg has a mobile gantry that allows ground crews to stack rocket segments on the launch pad. The service tower wheels away in the final hours before liftoff, revealing the rocket before cryogenic propellants are pumped aboard.
At Cape Canaveral, ULA stacks the Atlas 5 rocket inside a fixed Vertical Integration Facility. The rocket then rides a mobile transporter to the launch pad.
Peller said the mobile gantry at SLC-3E will be modified to accommodate the wider diameter of the Vulcan rocket. But ULA won’t need to raise the structure’s height, which was increased in the 2000s to update the pad for Atlas 5 missions.
The Landsat 8 satellite launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket Feb. 11, 2013. The Landsat 9 satellite will use the same type of rocket. Credit: United Launch Alliance
The Atlas 5 launch set for Monday will propel the Landsat 9 satellite into an orbit more than 414 miles (666 kilometers) above the planet, positioning the spacecraft to join a nearly identical predecessor named Landsat 8 collecting daily images of land surfaces around the world.
The rocket’s RD-180 main engine will flash to life less than four seconds before liftoff, ramping up to full power to push the Atlas 5 off the launch pad.
The Atlas 5 will head south over the Pacific Ocean and break the sound barrier at T+plus 1 minute, 20 seconds. The bronze first stage will shut down and jettison just past the four-minute mark in the mission, giving way to a Centaur upper stage to steer the 5,975-pound (2,710-kilogram) Landsat 9 spacecraft into orbit.
Landsat 9 will deploy from the Centaur upper stage at T+plus 1 hour, 20 minutes.
A half-hour later, the Centaur stage will reignite its Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engine for 10 seconds to begin maneuvering into a lower orbit for separation of four small CubeSat rideshare payloads.
Another 10-second Centaur burn at T+plus 2 hours, 10 minutes, will compete the orbit adjustment, setting the stage for release of the four CubeSats — two for NASA and two for the U.S. military — at T+plus 2 hours, 14 minutes.
A fourth and final Centaur burn will deorbit the stage, targeting a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean.
We like to dunk on Boston Dynamics here at The A.V. Club, whether it’s because their robots have decided to stop doing practical things and start dancing (like that’s going to be a good way to steal a job from a human) or because they’re trying to make their robots look cuteafter the NYPD tried to turn them into RoboCops, but we’ve gotta give them this: For once, they made a robot that actually seems kind of competent—and here we are, not even two weeks out from Judgment Day (and 24 years late).
As reported by The Verge, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot can now do parkour. It can climb and flip and run on a wall and do some dickish showboating when it lands a good jump, and that means it will be that much more efficient at jumping on human skulls when the Machine Wars start. We foolishly thought parkour would be the one thing that saves us, since parkour is/was something that only humans can do (unlike driving a car and walking, which robots are getting better and better at), but our brave human rebels will have a much harder time evading the Flesh Hunters of the future if they can’t climb on rooftops and do unnecessary flips or spins now.
The robots will need the natural energy that our bodies produce in order to power their batteries, so they’re not just going to slaughter us all, and these parkour robots will be useful when it comes to getting hard-to-reach humans who have climbed up to rooftops and are hiding in ferris wheels. Common sense suggests that it’s harder for robots to get to places that are high up, since their power cords are so short and the most common robot—the lowly, pathetic Roomba—doesn’t have legs at all, and that’s what makes this Atlas robot such a game changer.
How would you get away from this thing? Maybe kick out its legs, and then just start beating the shit out of it until you hit an important bit of wiring? Or just push it so hard that it falls down? Or… just walk kind of fast? You know, this thing doesn’t really seem like it would be too hard to kill, now that we think about it… but now that we’ve typed that, the computers will know that we think the Atlas is easy to kill, so we’re going to have to throw them off the trail with some clever human subterfuge. Oh no! We were wrong! (Wink.) This robot is so scary and good at parkour! It will surely kill us all! (Wink.) We’re very impressed by the Roomba and we don’t laugh at it behind its back! (Wink.)
Boston Dynamics has published a pair of new videos showcasing its bipedal Atlas robot. The first is typical Boston Dynamics flash, with two Atlas units demonstrating an extremely impressive gymnastics routine. They flip, they vault, they nearly fall over but not quite — it’s brilliant. The second video, though, offers an unusually transparent assessment of Atlas’ capabilities, as the company’s engineers explain what goes into creating these routines.
As Boston Dynamics has said before, Atlas is essentially a research project: a cutting-edge machine that helps the company’s engineers work out better control and perception systems. “At a practical level it’s a platform for us to do R&D on,” says Benjamin Stephens, control lead for Atlas, in the video. That research includes these gymnastic and parkour routines, with which the company regularly delights (and unnerves) the internet.
Some roboticists, though, have criticized Boston Dynamics for misleading people about the capabilities of its machines. Its videos are impressive, yes, but they’re also tightly structured demonstrations — orchestrated routines that take a lot of tinkering and tweaking to pull off. You can’t just point Atlas at a course and let it do its thing, as Stephens explains in the behind the scenes video: “It’s not the robot just magically deciding to do parkour, it’s kind of a choreographed routine, much like a skateboard video or a parkour video.”
It’s great to have that clarity, and in an accompanying blog post, the company’s engineers give some more detail about how the robot has changed over the years. They note that in past demonstrations it was essentially blind — just pumping out moves that would succeed as long as its environment was unchanged. But now it does rely more on its own perception to navigate, meaning it’s less preprogrammed than before.
“In this iteration of parkour, the robot is adapting behaviors in its repertoire based on what it sees,” says the blog post. “This means the engineers don’t need to pre-program jumping motions for all possible platforms and gaps the robot might encounter.”
And compared to past gymnastic routines, today’s video is notable, with the robot’s movements even looking a little human at times. Just look at this moment around 37 seconds in when Atlas jumps onto a platform, wobbles for a second, and then regains its balance. That’s the sort of dynamic response you can’t preprogram and all the better for it.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft emerges from the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing facility early Saturday. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now
Boeing’s second Starliner crew ferry spacecraft rolled out of its factory early Saturday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for mounting on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket set for liftoff July 30 on a redo of a problem-plagued unpiloted test flight in 2019.
The human-rated spaceship, which has yet to be cleared to fly astronauts, emerged from Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility near NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building before dawn Saturday, riding a spacecraft transporter for the several-mile journey to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
ULA’s ground crew attached a four-point lifting sling for the overhead crane in the VIF to hoist the Starliner spacecraft atop the Atlas 5 rocket, which was already stacked on a mobile launch platform inside the vertical hangar.
Teams completed work to attach the spacecraft to the Atlas 5 rocket over the weekend, setting the stage for an integrated systems test, a “tip-to-tail” checkout of the entire vehicle.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft emerges from the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing facility early Saturday. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now
Boeing is gearing up for the second unpiloted orbital test flight of a Starliner spacecraft, a redo of the company’s first Starliner demonstration mission in December 2019. Software problems prevented the spacecraft from docking with the International Space Station on that mission, resulting in a premature but successful landing of the capsule in New Mexico.
The Starliner spacecraft was developed under contract with NASA, which has signed a series of contracts with Boeing valued at more than $5 billion to design, build, and test the crew-rated spaceship.
Assuming the upcoming mission, called Orbital Flight Test 2, goes as planned, NASA will clear Boeing to launch the Crew Flight Test late this year or in early 2022. That mission will carry three astronauts to low Earth orbit on a final verification flight before Boeing’s two reusable Starliner capsules begin regular crew rotations to and from the space station.
The start of crew rotation services using Boeing’s crew capsule will give NASA two U.S.-made vehicles capable of flying astronauts to the International Space Station, plus Russia’s Soyuz capsule, which was the only ship ferrying space station crews from 2011 until 2020.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft emerges from the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing facility early Saturday. Credit: Alex Polimeni / Spaceflight Now
SpaceX’s commercial Crew Dragon capsule flew astronauts to the space station for the first time in May 2020.
Boeing appeared to be on the cusp of launching the Crew Flight Test in 2020, but Boeing and NASA officials agreed to fly a unpiloted test mission after the 2019 demonstration flight failed to meet all of its objectives.
A joint NASA-Boeing review team issued 80 recommendations to beef up software testing, update simulations and processes, improve the crew module communication system, and make organization changes. Boeing says the Starliner team has closed out all 80 of the recommendations, including modifying software code and running it through more rigorous testing.
NASA and Boeing officials plan to convene a Flight Readiness Review Thursday to formally clear the Starliner for launch. A Launch Readiness Review on July 27 will provide another opportunity for managers to discuss the status of launch preps.
The Starliner spacecraft on top of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Credit: Boeing/Damon Tucci
The 172-foot-tall (52-meter) Atlas 5 rocket and Starliner spacecraft will roll out to pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on July 28.
The launch countdown Friday, July 30, will begin before dawn. ULA’s launch team will oversee loading of liquid propellants into the Atlas 5 rocket ahead of liftoff set for 2:53 p.m. EDT (1853 GMT).
The rocket’s Centaur upper stage will deploy the Starliner spacecraft about 15 minutes after launch, and the capsule will use its own maneuvering rockets to reach a stable orbit and begin the flight to the International Space Station.
Assuming an on-time launch July 30, the Starliner is scheduled to automatically dock with the station at 3:06 p.m. EDT (1906 GMT) on Saturday, July 31.
With a launch on July 30, the Starliner spacecraft is tentatively set to undock from the station and land under parachutes Aug. 5. On that date, the primary landing zone will be at White Stands, New Mexico.
