Hey, at least the end of the Space Shuttle Era doesn’t mean the end of spectacular blast-offs.
That’s an Atlas V rocket, lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., this morning and carrying the unmanned spacecraft Juno — launching a five-year mission to Jupiter.
Expect to hear a lot more about the Atlas V in the months and years ahead. The Atlas V program is operated by United Space Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture, and Boeing has just selected the rocket for a future taxi service to the International Space Station, planning to use it to launch a commercial crew capsule called the CST-100.
