Be sure to Click LIKE at the bottom of this article, and share it everywhere!! By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots – Commentary
Since the end of the Space Shuttle, NASA has relied primarily on the Russians for transport into space. Our astronauts had to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft just to get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) but that wasn’t the only part of our space program that was connected to Russia.
The Atlas 5 program had also become reliant on Russia for engines used to launch NASA and other satellites into space.
While the Atlas 5 has been reliable as a launch vehicle; it is somewhat of an antique in the space industry. The Atlas 5 was the launch platform for Mercury missions in the early 1960’s that first took U.S. astronauts into space making the launch vehicle now a working museum piece of sorts.
For now, there are some 26 Atlas 5 rockets still in the NASA inventory, all of which have been dedicated to specific satellite launch missions and all of which are powered by RD-180 engines manufactured by and purchased from the Russians. While the RD-180 engines are proven and reliable, having been used by NASA for the better part of a decade, thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and our nation’s sanctions against Russia, issues have arisen.
