Atlas 5

United Launch Alliance has purchased all the RD-180 engines it requires for the Atlas V and has 29 Atlas V vehicles remaining with RD-180s stored in a warehouse in Alabama.

United Launch Alliance is no longer offering the Atlas V after a final series of contracts that include an April order for nine Atlas V launches by Amazon to launch part of Project Kuiper.

The launch of Landsat 9 on an Atlas 5 from Vandenberg Space Force Base slipped from 2021-09-16 to no earlier than 2021-09-23 due to pandemic demands for medical liquid oxygen impacting delivery of the needed liquid nitrogen supply.

Vulcan is slated to replace ULA’s Atlas V rocket because the Department of Defense cannot continue to buy RD-180 engines beyond 2022.

One of ULA’s originally assigned Vulcan NSSL missions was switched to Atlas V because Vulcan would not be certified in time to launch in 2022.

United Launch Alliance built Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral to be used interchangeably for Atlas V and Vulcan launches without major reconfigurations.

The congressional ban on RD-180-powered launches applies only to Defense Department missions, allowing Atlas V to continue to be offered for civil and commercial launches.

The decision to remove Starliner from the Atlas V creates an extended delay for OFT-2 that will require waiting until after the mid-October launch of NASA’s Lucy mission on another Atlas V, the SpaceX Crew-3 launch at the end of October, and the return of the Crew-2 spacecraft to free the docking port.

Boeing will remove the Starliner spacecraft that was to launch 2021-08 on the Orbital Flight Test-2 mission from its Atlas V rocket and return it to Boeing’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center for additional work.

The Space Test Program 3 mission scheduled to launch later 2021 on an Atlas V will carry the first Long Duration Propulsive ESPA (LDPE) payload.

U.S. law bans the Department of Defense from procuring Atlas 5 launches beyond 2022.

Congress passed the law banning DoD procurement of Atlas 5 launches in 2016 in response to geopolitical tensions with Russia.

United Launch Alliance announced in 2015 that it would build the Vulcan rocket as its next-generation vehicle to replace Atlas 5 and Delta 4.

Starliner will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The Starliner spacecraft was atop an Atlas V rocket during the planned 2021-08-03 liftoff.

Crews will roll the Atlas V rocket and Starliner back to the vertical integration facility on 2021-08-04 to support additional investigation.

The Atlas V carrying Starliner had rolled out to the pad and both Starliner and the Atlas V were ready to launch before NASA postponed OFT-2.

The Atlas V rocket will deliver Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to a 98 nautical mile sub-orbital trajectory.

The Atlas V launch of Boeing’s Starliner on OFT-2 is planned for 2021-07-30 at 2:53 p.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.