CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A new addition to Lockheed Martin's Atlas rocket family successfully carried a direct broadcast television satellite into orbit from Florida on Thursday.
For Echostar Communications Corp., of Littleton, Colo., the good news means it will be able to make local television programming more widely and easily available to its Dish Network subscribers, while also improving programming options for customers in Alaska and Hawaii.
"It was a fantastic day," said Charlie Ergen, president and CEO of Echostar. "We're looking forward to getting online in April."
Because of this new spacecraft, many customers who had to rely on having two satellite dish antennas on their roof will be able to receive all of their programming from a single dish. But that is still several months away.
And for Lockheed Martin the apparently flawless maiden flight of the Atlas 3B rocket cleared another hurdle on the company's path to its most important mission of the year: the planned May 9 launch of the first Atlas 5 Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle.
The reason: About 85 percent of the parts on an Atlas 5 have now been tested onboard the two Atlas 3 launches logged so far, said Atlas launch director Adrian Laffitte.
Thursday's Atlas 3B was different from the Atlas 3A launched in May 2000 in that the Atlas 3B sports a stretched Centaur upper stage with two RL-10 class engines -- the same upper stage intended for use on the Atlas 5. The Atlas 3A has a singe engine Centaur.Although engineers still have to study their data to make sure, it appears on the surface that all went well and company officials have no reason to believe the Atlas 5 launch -- or a NASA mission scheduled for March 8 on an Atlas 2 -- cannot proceed.
"It was a perfect shot," said Mark Albrecht, president and CEO of International Launch Services (ILS) of McLean, Va. -- the company that markets the Atlas and Russian Proton boosters.
Liftoff came at 7:43 a.m. EST (1243 GMT), a half-hour later than planned.
The delay was forced on the launch team earlier in the morning when a couple of problems cropped up at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's launch pad 36B. One involved a liquid hydrogen valve, which was fixed; another a very minor leak of nitrogen in ground support equipment, which was ignored.
Weather also was a concern because of a cold front that moved over Florida's Space Coast during the night. While rain, surface winds and clouds cleared up as a worry, the upper level winds remained a concern until just moments before launch. That's when data from a weather balloon revealed it was safe to fly with an adjusted flight path through the atmosphere.
The Russian-made RD-180 engine roared to life and the 18-story rocket lifted off, slowly at first and then quickly gaining speed as it climbed through the clearing morning sky.
Less than 29 minutes later the Echostar 7 satellite -- built by Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems of Newtown, Pa. -- was released into orbit from the Centaur upper stage and officials declared the launch a success. With an expected 14-year lifetime, the spacecraft is the seventh in the series and the fifth launched by ILS (Four were Atlas, one was Proton).
Meanwhile the next launch from planet Earth is expected very early Saturday when an Arianespace Ariane 4 rocket is to carry Intelsat 904 into orbit from the edge of the Amazon forest in South America. The launch was targeted for earlier this week but last-minute concerns with the rocket's nose cone delayed the shot.
advertisement
