Launch Vehicles
Atlas
United States
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An American launch vehicle family derived from the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, the first U.S. ICBM. Its Mercury-Atlas variant carried John Glenn on Friendship 7 in February 1962, the first American orbital spaceflight, and later Atlas-Agena and Atlas-Centaur variants launched planetary probes and reconnaissance satellites for decades.
Facts
Vehicle ClassMedium-lift expendable launch vehicle 1 ManufacturerConvair (General Dynamics) 1 First Flight DateDate of the first crewed Mercury-Atlas flight, Friendship 7; the Atlas missile itself first flew in 1957. StatusRetired in its original ICBM-derived configurations; its name and stage-and-a-half heritage continued through Atlas II and III before evolving into the unrelated-airframe Atlas V. 1 Sources
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