![]() Credit: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The missile engine compartment of the Agena A rocket. Credit: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Credit: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station The engine nozzle of the Agena A rocket. Credit: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Credit: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station The top of the Agena A rocket’s aft side. The top of the Agena A rocket’s aft side. Astronautix gives Agena-D a loaded mass of about 6.8 tons, as compared with around 23 tons for Centaur (though this varies quite a bit with version changes). Paint peeling and cracking on the aft nozzle of the Agena B rocket. Agena is a much smaller and less powerful stage than Centaur. Credit: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Robert Goddards first liquid-fueled rocket, Gemini VIII, with command pilot Neil Alden Armstrong and pilot David Randolph Scott, lifted off from Launch Complex. Here is what the rockets look like today: The nose cone of the Agena B rocket. The Air Force does not yet have funding for the restoration, according to the proposal. In accompanying documentation, the Air Force makes clear the vintage wheels the rockets sit on are not to be replaced. Now, as part of an effort to restore the rockets, the Air Force is looking for a small business to repair damaged sheet metal, repaint the boosters, and emblazon the rockets with their original insignias and stenciling. ![]() In a series of photos posted to the Federal Business Opportunities web site in July, the rockets are shown with peeling and cracking paint and patches of corrosion. Years of outdoor display in what the service describes as “a semi-marine atmosphere,” means the rockets are in need of new paint and some general freshening up. Today, each of the rockets is on display outside the Air Force Space and Missile Museum at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Air Force, the effort requires a nearly 150-page request for proposals.Īgena A and Agena B, a member of the Atlas family of rockets, launched 33 times from 1960-1966, were used to lift the Ranger lunar spacecraft and the Mariner Venus fly-by spacecraft into orbit. “United Launch Alliance Atlas V Rocket, with 200th Centaur, Successfully Launches Mobile User Objective System-1 Mission.”, accessed June 29, 2012.WASHINGTON – What does it take to restore two 1960s-era rockets to their pre-launch appearance?įor the U.S. “National Security Space Launch Report 2006.” rocket motor to boost them to higher orbit. “Friendship 7: John Glenn’s spacecraft and its flight.” The Plain Dealer. The subsatellites were attached to the aft rack of the Agena for early. “Atlas Agena D SLV-3A.”, accessed June 29, 2012. Atlas launch vehicles have also placed national security, communications, Earth observation and weather monitoring satellites into orbit around the Earth, making it possible for our modern world to stay connected and protected through advancements in technology and communication. Atlas-Centaurs launched the Pioneer deep space probes in the early 1970s, which sent back information on Saturn, Jupiter and the farthest reaches of the solar system. But Atlas launch vehicles launched more than 100 scientific missions from 1960-1978, including Mariner 4’s flyby of Mars in 1964, which delivered the first up-close photographs of another planet. By the time he splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean later that same afternoon, he was a worldwide celebrity and an icon of human spaceflight along with Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union.īy 1965, Atlas ICBMs were taken off alert status. Traveling more than 75,000 miles in just under five hours, he orbited the planet three times. Ten minutes later, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn and the Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft were launched on an Atlas-Agena rocket. The Atlas legacy has gone on to include science and exploration missions that have been fundamental to the understanding of space and the Earth itself. Eisenhower’s Christmas greeting to the world. Though initially designed to carry nuclear warheads, by 1958, an Atlas rocket successfully launched SCORE, the United States’ first communications satellite, which delivered President Dwight D.
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