Powerful Atlas V boosts Space Command mission from Cape Canaveral

United Launch Alliance’s most powerful Atlas V rocket thundered from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station near sunset Saturday with an unusual Air Force mission headed high over the equator.

Firing a main engine and five solid rocket boosters producing more than 2.5 million pounds of thrust, the 20-story rocket shot from Launch Complex 41 at 7:13 p.m.

The mission labeled AFSPC-11 concluded nearly seven hours later after a communications satellite and an experimental spacecraft were dropped directly into orbits more than 22,000 miles up.

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“Today’s launch is a testament to why the ULA team continually serves as our nation’s most reliable and successful launch provider for our nation’s most critical space assets,” said Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of government and commercial programs, in a statement early Sunday.

Military space experts had never heard of the primary satellite called Continuous Broadcast Augmenting Satcom, or CBAS, until Air Force Space Command revealed it about a week ago, and they were unsure which existing systems it might be supporting.

“It is not entirely clear what this satellite is supposed to do other than be a broadcast system of some sort,” said Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Project and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Air Force said the satellite would “provide communications relay capabilities to support our senior leaders and combatant commanders.”

An innovative secondary mission called Eagle aimed to deploy an adapter ring from the rocket as a standalone spacecraft carrying five technology demonstrations. They included systems seeking to harden satellites against attack, perform self-inspections and improve views of objects flying in that high, geosynchronous orbit.

“That all seems to be in line with the focus you see from Air Force Space Command on where they want to go with resilient, defendable satellite architectures in the future,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation.

The mission's "direct insertion" of satellites into the high, geosynchronous orbit — where satellites take exactly a day to circle Earth, so appear to hover over fixed points on the ground — was very rare.

ULA CEO Tory Bruno estimated a dozen or so of the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture's 127 missions to date have performed such flights, which he said required more technology and finesse to pull off than shorter missions.

"It is much more difficult," he said.

The mission was ULA's fourth of the year and the 77th by its workhorse Atlas V.

Another big challenge awaits on the company's next launch, targeted for May 5. The 78th Atlas V mission will attempt to send NASA's InSight lander on its way to Mars, the space agency's first mission to depart for the Red Planet from California.

The Eastern Range gets right back to work Monday evening with its second launch attempt in three days. At 6:32 p.m., a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will attempt to boost a planet-hunting NASA science satellite from Launch Complex 40. 

Kennedy Space Center will host prelaunch press briefings at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Sunday, aired on NASA TV, about the $337 million Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, or TESS.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.

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