Atlas V rocket set for Thursday night launch

CAPE CANAVERAL — Mission managers will gather Tuesday to review their readiness for Cape Canaveral's first rocket launch of 2017, a planned 7:46 p.m. Thursday blastoff by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and a U.S. missile warning satellite.

Teams last Thursday hoisted the roughly 10,000-pound spacecraft worth $1.2 billion atop the Atlas V at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41.

The Lockheed Martin-built Space Based Infrared System satellite is equipped with infrared sensors to provide early detection and tracking of ballistic missiles.

Known as SBIRS GEO-3, the spacecraft will be the third placed in a geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator, where it will appear to fly in a fixed position above the planet. A fourth SBIRS satellite is expected to launch late this year to complete the operational constellation.

The Atlas V rocket is expected to roll a quarter-mile from its processing tower to the launch pad on Wednesday. A 40-minute launch window opens at 7:46 p.m. ET Thursday.

The mission is ULA's first of at least 11 planned this year, including seven from Florida.

ULA last Thursday also made progress preparing for its second launch of the year, lifting a Delta IV rocket booster vertical at Launch Complex 37. The rocket is scheduled to launch the Air Force's ninth Wideband Global Satcom communications satellite on March 8. The WGS-9 satellite arrived at the Cape last week.

Flight hardware also arrived for ULA's third planned launch, as Orbital ATK delivered a Cygnus spacecraft's cargo module to Kennedy Space Center. An Atlas V is targeting a March 16 launch of supplies to the International Space Station.

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