The Atlas 5 or Atlas V rocket is one of America’s most hardest working rockets, alongside the Space Shuttle, Delta ll, Falcon 9, and the legendary Saturn V.
The Atlas V was first supposed to be a low budget, but useful rocket for Network services. The first launch launched a basic communication satellite into low Earth orbit. The second launch successfully got the first satellite by the country Greece. And by the time the third launch rolled the rocket had grabbed the attention of the US military, who was having trouble sharing rockets with NASA saw this as a better option then playing tug of war over the Delta ll rocket.
In 2004 NASA asked the developers Lockheed Martin and ULA (United Launch Alliance) with the Atlas's biggest challenge yet.
NASA was building a probe that would fly past the dwarf planet Pluto, and they needed someone to launch the human sized spacecraft around 3.2 billion miles to the far away world and couldn't find anyone else to do it. It was a really big leap from just launching satellites less than a million miles into low Earth orbit to over 3 billion miles, but Lockheed Martin and ULA decided to take the Changelle, and on January, 19, 2006 the Atlas V rocket sent the probe whom NASA had named New Horizons to Pluto at 10 miles per second, the fastest speed ever traveled at that time. New Horizons would fly by Pluto in the summer of 2015 returning data and up close images of the small world, just 9 years after launch.
NASA was impressed by Lockheed Martin and ULA’s grand Atlas V rocket and have been able to launch many space probes since. Some of the highlights include:
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to the Moon 2009
Curiosity rover to Mars 2011
Juno probe to Jupiter 2011
MAVEN to Mars 2013
Insight to Mars 2018
Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter to Mars 2020
Landsat 9 to map Earth 2021
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft to the ISS in May 2022.
In 2021 ULA and Lockheed Martin announced that the rocket would retire in the late 2020s but until then would host at least 20 more launches.
As of today the Atlas V is one of the few rockets that has not had a single launch failure so far. Leaving it with a success rate of around 99%. Most rockets only have a success rate of 95% or less.
The Atlas V rocket is a true hero in the rocket committee and its legacy will not end there, ULA is trying to fund a bigger rocket much like it, but more powerful and faster.
As of today the Atlas V is active and healthy
