Alliance Atlas V Rocket Cost $1.2 Billion To Launch

While the United States of America was eyeing on President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, the United Launch Alliance on the other hand was all eyes on the Atlas V Rocket as it was launched on Friday. The rocket blasted off at night on a mission to upgrade the satellite system for sending early warnings in cases of ballistic missile launch. The launch was ULA’s first this 2017 and the fourth will be blasted off in November.

The Atlas V reportedly lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station located in Florida at exactly 7:42 p.m. on Friday. The rocket was holding the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) Geo Flight 3 satellite of the Air Force. The device was designed to help detect missile launches from any part of the world especially those that are possibly carrying a nuclear warhead.

The Atlas V Rocket of the United Launch Alliance and its payload reportedly costs $1.2 billion to complete the upgrade mission. According to Spaceflight Insider, the 19-storey rocket was powered by the Russian main engine RD-180 which generate 860,000 pounds of thrust for four minutes. The SBIRS then was dropped off in orbit 44 minutes after launch and has been on its way to a surveillance post which is reportedly over 22,000 miles above the equator.

From the said height, the infrared sensors installed on the Lockheed Martin-built satellites will be able to scan sections of the Earth while simultaneously being able to monitor the smaller areas of interest. As revealed by the USA Today, these sensors works to pick up heat from potential missile launches regardless of the size. The gathered information will then alarm officials about where the missile might have launched from and where it is possibly going. Furthermore, the warning satellites will also be used to track space launches.

“Hundreds of launchers and missiles are currently in range of our deployed forces,” Col. Dennis Bythewood, director of the Remote Sensing Systems Directorate in the Los Angeles Air Force Base said in a statement. The first of these new warning satellites was launched in 2011 to replace an older spacecraft launched by the Defense Support Program in the early 1970s. The racket sent off on Friday represents the third out of six missions of the SBIRS system. The fourth will be launched on Nov. 9 while the other two are slated for delivery in 2020 and 2021.

These SBIRS missions have been used in the past to track Scud missiles that Iraq fired at Israel and to track the North Korean missiles and rockets. They can see space launches, helping to track new satellites. The launch on Friday is the first of the 11 rockets of the United Launch Alliance scheduled in 2017 and the Atlas V’s 69th mission.

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