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NASA Pluto Mission to Rely on Lockheed Martin Atlas 5
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 12:45 pm ET
25 July 2003
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Humanity's first probe to take an up-close look at Pluto and its moon Charon will be launched in January 2006 on an Atlas 5 rocket, NASA officials announced Thursday. The Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 to be used will be a model 551, which means it will have the larger five-meter-diameter fairing, five strap-on solid rocket boosters and a single engine Centaur upper stage. In addition, to give the spacecraft the necessary speed it will need, a Boeing-built third stage featuring a Star 48B solid rocket motor will be used. The announcement from NASA came hours before the U.S. Air Force revealed it would award Lockheed Martin more than $1 billion worth of Atlas 5 business as a means of punishing rival Boeing for wrongdoing in its Delta 4 program. NASA officials said the Delta 4 was under consideration but selected the Atlas 5 instead. The firm, fixed-price launch service award was made under the terms of an existing NASA Launch Services contract. The space agency last year selected an Atlas vehicle to launch the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in August 2005. "We are thrilled that NASA chose the Atlas 5 vehicle to launch the Pluto New Horizons mission," said Mark Albrecht, president of International Launch Services, which markets the Atlas 5 and Russian Proton rockets. "Such high-value scientific missions require the time-critical and reliable access to space that Atlas has proven it can deliver." Since 1959, Atlas vehicles have flown 124 missions for NASA, including the majority of all U.S. interplanetary spacecraft. Three Atlas 5 rockets have flown so far, all successfully. The most recent was July 17 and featured the inaugural flight of the model 500-series. The Pluto New Horizons mission will attempt to answer key questions about Pluto and Charon, such as what their atmospheres, surfaces and interiors are like. The probe is being managed by the Applied Physics Laboratory of The Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Md. Dr. Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., is the principal investigator. More about the Pluto mission:
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