This Decatur company is taking humans to space – The Decatur Daily

United Launch Alliance this year will begin assembling the Atlas V rocket that will boost two astronauts to the International Space Station, a spokeswoman said last week.

The project, to be handled at ULA's Decatur manufacturing plant, is part of NASAs commercial crew program, a plan to end American reliance on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the space station 249 miles above the Earth. Since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011, all astronauts have been delivered via Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

We are bridging history as we prepare to launch American astronauts again, ULA spokeswoman Lyn Chassagne said. John Glenn became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth after being launched on a heritage Atlas LV-3B rocket.

From raw material to launch, construction of an Atlas V typically takes about 18 months, according to Chassagne.

When the rocket finally flies, it will be the first to carry Boeings new CST 100 Starliner Capsule, which is still in development.

The capsule is slightly larger than an Apollo command module and will be able to carry crews of up to seven to the ISS as well as to private space stations once in service.

After a test flight in June 2018, the capsule is slated to take two astronauts to the ISS in December 2018, launched into space by the Atlas V assembled in Decatur.

ULA marked the successful launch of a National Reconnaissance Office satellite on Wednesday via an Atlas V from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It was ULAs second launch of the year. Two more ULA launches are planned this month, both from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Work on the commercial crew program is not ULAs only current endeavor into manned space flight. ULA is slated to deliver to Cape Canaveral this month the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS, for NASAs new Space Launch System.

Constructed in Decatur, the ICPS will serve as the second stage for the maiden flight of the Space Launch System, or SLS, slated for November 2018. That flight was intended to be an unmanned test mission around the moon using the Orion spacecraft that eventually will carry astronauts to Mars.

But NASA announced last month it is studying options for adding crew to that mission, which will require certifying the ICPS for human flight. The ICPS is a converted upper stage from a ULA Delta IV, which was not designed for manned space flight.

James Muncy, founder of the space policy consultancy PoliSpace, said last week that adding crew would likely delay that launch until after the Starliner launch, noting the life-support system for the Orion capsule wasnt slated for completion until 2021.

He anticipated few problems rating the ICPS of the Atlas V for human flight, which mainly involves analysis and very few changes to its hardware or software.

Neither Atlas V nor Delta IV are intrinsically human rated, but the Atlas V is easy to human rate, and ULA has been working on modifications to it since 2010 as part of the commercial crew program. But both vehicles are very reliable, he said.

A scaled-up version of the SLS with 143 tons of lift capacity is expected to be the launch system that eventually takes astronauts to Mars.

A ULA competitor could still be the first domestic rocket to take Americans to space since the retirement of the shuttle.

California-based SpaceX is slated to fly its new Dragon 2 capsule in May 2018 after an unmanned test flight in November of this year. That capsule is also part of NASAs commercial crew program to serve the ISS.

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This Decatur company is taking humans to space - The Decatur Daily