United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket returned to action Sunday with a mission to deploy multiple satellites into geosynchronous orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office and the US Space Force.
This mission ended a 10-month gap in launches for ULA's primary rocket, the longest period between Atlas V launches in 20 years as the company winds down the Atlas V program in favor of the new Vulcan rocket. There are still 18 more Atlas V flights on ULA's launch schedule—all are reserved by customers—primarily carrying satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband network and launching astronauts on Boeing's long-delayed Starliner crew capsule.
ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has several Atlas V rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral. Customer delays are the main reason ULA hasn't launched any Atlas V rockets since last November. At one point, Boeing's Starliner crew capsule was supposed to launch with astronauts for the first time on top of an Atlas V rocket earlier this year, but that test flight is now delayed into 2024. Another US Space Force mission has also been delayed for months and now likely won't fly until early 2024.
The mission that launched Sunday for the NRO, which owns the US government's fleet of spy satellites, was delayed from August 29 to allow ULA to move the rocket back to its hangar for shelter from Hurricane Idalia. The NRO is usually tight-lipped about its super-secret space missions, but the spy satellite agency decided to open up a bit about this launch. The satellites on-board the Atlas V mission, which the NRO called "Silent Barker," will track the movements of other spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, with a special emphasis on Chinese and Russian satellite activity.
Finally, with the Atlas V back on the launch pad, the rocket ignited its Russian-made RD-180 main engine and five strap-on solid-fueled boosters at 8:47 am EDT (12:47 UTC) Monday to climb away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The 196-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket arced toward the east through a clear sky, then jettisoned its five boosters to fall into the Atlantic Ocean. A few moments later, the Atlas V released its payload fairing, then its first stage separated to allow a Centaur upper stage to continue accelerating into orbit.
Multiple burns by the Centaur upper stage's RL10 engine, made by Aerojet Rocketdyne, placed the satellites for the NRO and the Space Force into an orbit close to geosynchronous altitude roughly 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) over the equator. It took about six hours for the rocket to deploy the payloads into the proper orbit, and officials declared success Sunday afternoon. These missions directly to geosynchronous orbits are particularly challenging, and SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV rockets are the only US launch vehicles currently flying that have demonstrated their ability to accomplish this task.
“We specialize in complex high-energy orbits, and the team is proud to have launched this mission direct to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) to meet our nation’s space protection needs," said Gary Wentz, ULA's vice president of government and commercial programs, in a post-launch press release.
Atlas V will fly for many more years
ULA has spent nearly a decade trying to wean itself off of the Russian engines that power the Atlas V rocket. The number of Atlas V rockets left for ULA to fly—18—was determined by the number of Russian RD-180 engines left in ULA's inventory. The new Vulcan rocket will have methane-fueled BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company.
While the Atlas V has a finite number of launches remaining, it's likely that the rocket will still be in service as the 2020s draw to a close. That's because Boeing's Starliner crew capsule is slated to launch seven times on Atlas V rockets, with one crew test flight followed by six operational crew rotation missions to the International Space Station.
Once Starliner is operational, NASA plans to alternate between SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing's Starliner for crew transportation services to the space station. With space station expeditions lasting about six months, on average, that means Starliner will fly about once per year. That could put the final Starliner flight on the current contract in 2030, when NASA and its partners currently plan to decommission the International Space Station.
While it doesn't seem ideal to keep a legacy rocket program flying when its replacement will presumably be launching on a regular basis, ULA says this isn't such a big deal. The final slate of Atlas V missions will use the same launch pad as the new Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral, and the company says it can support launches on a cadence of every two weeks or so without any major reconfiguration at the launch site.
The launch Sunday was the 98th Atlas V mission overall and the final Atlas V launch for the NRO. That leaves just two Atlas V rockets left to fly for customers other than Boeing and Amazon, which has reserved nine Atlas Vs for its initial batches of Internet satellites for the Kuiper broadband network. The first of those missions for Amazon will launch in early October. Viasat and the Space Force each have one Atlas V flight remaining on contract.
ULA's other rocket, the Delta IV, will retire next year after one additional mission for the NRO.
A watchdog in geosynchronous orbit
The government-owned surveillance satellites that launched Sunday morning will enter service over the next few months to begin monitoring traffic in geosynchronous orbit, a popular location for numerous military and commercial spacecraft. In that orbit, a satellite flies around Earth at the same rate as the planet's rotation, giving a spacecraft a constant view of the same geographic region. This is particularly useful for missions like communications and data relay, military early warning, and weather observation.
The Silent Barker mission will help track potential threats to multibillion-dollar Space Force and NRO satellites in geosynchronous orbit, officials said in a press conference before the launch. The NRO broke with its usual policy of not discussing any details of its missions to let adversaries like China and Russia know it has the capability to see what they are doing in orbit.
“Geosynchronous orbit is far away," said Chris Scolese, director of the NRO. "Ground-based systems have a harder time seeing what’s up there. This provides us the capability of being in this same orbit, so that we’re closer to what’s happening up there. It will not be looking at the ground; it will be looking at space.”
The NRO managed the development of the Silent Barker satellites and will operate them in orbit, while the Space Force provided the launch on ULA's Atlas V rocket.
The Silent Barker satellites will detect and continually track other objects in geosynchronous orbit, a capability that military leaders have prioritized over the last decade. In that time, Pentagon officials say there has been an escalation in "cat and mouse" games between US satellites and those operated by China and Russia.
US officials have highlighted several occurrences of Russian inspector satellites approaching US spy satellites flying in low-Earth orbit in recent years. Higher up in geosynchronous orbit, another mysterious Russian military satellite has roamed near numerous commercial communications satellites and a French-Italian military spacecraft, raising concerns that it may be trying to intercept radio signals.
The US military already has its own satellites capable of approaching other objects in geosynchronous orbit. These satellites, part of the Space Force's Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP), were part of an orbital dance with two Chinese military satellites last year.
The US military dispatched one of the GSSAP satellites to get a closer look at the two Chinese spacecraft, but the Chinese satellites took off in opposite directions. One of the Chinese spacecraft then settled into a position to get a sunlit view of the Space Force surveillance satellite that had been chasing it.
So far, there haven't been reports that any of these cat-and-mouse games have resulted in either a physical or cyber attack on a US military satellite, but that's what the Silent Barker mission is designed to guard against.
“The idea of the mission is to put a satellite into geosynchronous orbit and then to be looking at that orbital regime and get a sense of what’s happening day to day," Scolese said. "Satellites do move in geosynchronous orbit. You’ve heard about communications satellites moving from one location to another to provide better coverage to other areas."
Officials have not disclosed what companies were involved in building the Silent Barker satellites or what kind of sensors the spacecraft will use. The exact number of satellites and the budget for the program also remain a secret.
"Certainly, we want to be able to see that so we know what’s going on in the area, but we also want to know if something is going on that is unexpected, or shouldn’t be going on, that could potentially represent a threat to a high-value asset, either ours or one of our allies'," Scolese said.
He called the Silent Barker mission a "watchdog" in geosynchronous orbit. That's similar nomenclature to the "neighborhood watch" description the Space Force has used for the GSSAP satellites. A key difference between the Silent Barker and GSSAP programs, according to military officials, is the ability of the Silent Barker satellites to continually monitor the position, or "maintain custody," of other objects in geosynchronous orbit.
“What Silent Barker is going to do is provide that indication and warning (of a possible threat to a US satellite), so it can inform decisions about what we do or don’t need to do in terms of maneuvers or awareness," Scolese said.
US officials are planning at least one more launch with additional Silent Barker satellites in the coming years, allowing the multi-spacecraft constellation to be fully operational in 2026, Scolese said.
