posted 09-13-2004 06:48 PM            

The last of the original General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin Atlas-Centaur boosters powered by Rocketdyne MA-5A engines rocketed into history here Aug. 31. The mission marks the passing of the torch to a much different and newer Atlas design powered by Russian engines.

The final Rocketdyne-powered mission used the Atlas IIAS configuration with four solid rocket boosters. Its payload, the secret National Reconnaissance Office NROL-1 spacecraft--dubbed "Nemesis" by the launch team--has characteristics like those used by NRO data relay satellites in elliptical orbit.

The original General Dynamics Rocketdyne-powered Atlas development was a huge Cold War project involving 17 major contractors, 200 subcontractors and 80,000 aerospace workers. The Atlas first stage with its triple-nozzle engines flew hundreds of ICBM and space launch missions over a 47-year history, dating back to 1957. Developed originally as America's first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, its original Rocketdyne powerplants generated five times the power of Hoover Dam and ushered in an era of key U.S. innovations in rocketry.

BUT IT WAS HERE at the Cape where the Atlas was turned into the workhorse of the U.S. space program, launching John Glenn and the rest of the Project Mercury astronauts along with docking targets for the Gemini manned missions and numerous deepspace exploration flights.

The Atlas with Agena upper stages were used for early planetary and military missions, but most notably the Atlas debuted the oxygen/hydrogen Centaur upper stage powered by Pratt & Whitney RL10 engines.

The basic Atlas-Centaur configuration that flew its final mission on Aug. 31 was conceived about 1960 to launch the unmanned Surveyor lunar landers. Its torturous flight test program began here in 1962.

Although one much different Russian RD-180-powered Atlas III remains to be launched off Complex 36B, last month's NRO flight was the final mission to be flown off Complex 36A, a pad used for 69 Atlas-Centaur missions for 42 years. Notable in its history, Complex 36A launched the Surveyor 1 and 2 lunar landers in 1966, the Mariner 7 mission to Mars in 1969 and Pioneer 10 in 1972--the first man-made object to exit the solar system after making the first flyby of Jupiter.

In more recent years, the Atlas-Centaur has launched key science spacecraft such as the SOHO solar observatory, as well as dozens of satcom and military payloads to geosynchronous orbit under the aegis of International Launch Services.

Lockheed Martin's Adrian Laffette was launch director for the flight along with NRO Mission Director USAF Col. Chip Zakrzewski, who also heads up NRO's Office of Space Launch. Lockheed Martin's Ed Christiansen was the launch director in the Complex 36 blockhouse for the flight, which took five attempts due to weather and minor technical problems.