With a landmark launch, the Pentagon is lastly freed from Russian rocket engines

Liftoff of ULA's Atlas V rocket on the US Space Force's USSF-51 mission.
Enlarge / Liftoff of ULA’s Atlas V rocket on the US Area Drive’s USSF-51 mission.

United Launch Alliance delivered a labeled US navy payload to orbit Tuesday for the final time with an Atlas V rocket, ending the Pentagon’s use of Russian rocket engines as nationwide safety missions transition to all-American launchers.

The Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station in Florida at 6:45 am EDT (10:45 UTC) Tuesday, propelled by a Russian-made RD-180 engine and 5 strap-on solid-fueled boosters in its strongest configuration. This was the a hundred and first launch of an Atlas V rocket since its debut in 2002, and the 58th and last Atlas V mission with a US nationwide safety payload since 2007.

The US Area Drive’s Area Programs Command confirmed a profitable conclusion to the mission, code-named USSF-51, on Tuesday afternoon. The rocket’s Centaur higher stage launched the highest secret USSF-51 payload about seven hours after liftoff, seemingly in a high-altitude geostationary orbit over the equator. The navy didn’t publicize the precise specs of the rocket’s goal orbit.

“What a improbable launch and a becoming conclusion for our final nationwide safety area Atlas V (launch),” stated Walt Lauderdale, USSF-51 mission director at Area Programs Command, in a post-launch press launch. “Once we look again at how effectively Atlas V met our wants since our first launch in 2007, it illustrates the laborious work and dedication from our nation’s industrial base. Collectively, we made it occur, and due to groups like this, we’ve essentially the most profitable and thriving launch trade on the earth, bar none.”

RD-180’s lengthy goodbye

The launch Tuesday morning was the tip of an period born within the Nineteen Nineties when US authorities coverage allowed Lockheed Martin, the unique developer of the Atlas V, to make use of Russian rocket engines throughout its first stage. There was a widespread sentiment within the first decade after the autumn of the Soviet Union that the US and different Western nations ought to accomplice with Russia to maintain the nation’s aerospace employees employed and forestall “rogue states” like Iran or North Korea from hiring them.

On the time, the Pentagon was procuring new rockets to switch legacy variations of the Atlas, Delta, and Titan rocket households, which had been in service for the reason that late Fifties or early Nineteen Sixties.

A cluster of solid rocket boosters surround the RD-180 main engine as the Atlas V launcher climbs away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the USSF-51 mission.
Enlarge / A cluster of strong rocket boosters encompass the RD-180 principal engine because the Atlas V launcher climbs away from Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station to start the USSF-51 mission.

In the end, the Air Drive selected Lockheed Martin’s Atlas V and Boeing’s Delta IV rocket for improvement in 1998. The Atlas V, with its Russian principal engine, was considerably cheaper than the Delta IV and the extra profitable of the 2 designs. After Tuesday’s launch, 15 extra Atlas V rockets are booked to fly payloads for business prospects and NASA, primarily for Amazon’s Kuiper community and Boeing’s Starliner crew spacecraft. The forty fifth and last Delta IV launch occurred in April.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged their rocket divisions in 2006 to type a 50-50 three way partnership named United Launch Alliance, which grew to become the only contractor licensed to hold giant US navy satellites to orbit till SpaceX began launching nationwide safety missions in 2018.

SpaceX filed a lawsuit in 2014 to protest the Air Drive’s choice to award ULA a multibillion-dollar sole-source contract for 36 Atlas V and Delta IV rocket booster cores. The litigation began quickly after Russia’s navy occupation and annexation of Crimea, which prompted US authorities sanctions on distinguished Russian authorities officers, together with Dmitry Rogozin, then Russia’s deputy prime minister and later the pinnacle of Russia’s area company.

Rogozin, identified for his bellicose however normally toothless rhetoric, threatened to halt exports of RD-180 engines for US navy missions on the Atlas V. That did not occur till Russia lastly stopped engine exports to the US in 2022, following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At that time, ULA already had all of the engines it wanted to fly out all of its remaining Atlas V rockets. This export ban had a bigger impact on Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which additionally used Russian engines, forcing the event of a model new first stage booster with US engines.

The SpaceX lawsuit, Russia’s preliminary navy incursions into Ukraine in 2014, and the ensuing sanctions marked the start of the tip for the Atlas V rocket and ULA’s use of the Russian RD-180 engine. The twin-nozzle RD-180, made by a Russian firm named NPO Energomash, consumes kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants and generates 860,000 kilos of thrust at full throttle.