The Atlas H was an American

expendable launch system An expendable launch system (or expendable launch vehicle/ELV) is a launch vehicle that can be launched only once, after which its components are destroyed during reentry or impact with Earth, or discarded in space. ELVs typically consist of s ...

derived from the

SM-65 Atlas The SM-65 Atlas was the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by the Convair Division of General ...

missile. It was a member of the

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of world map, maps of Earth or of a continent or region of Earth. Advances in astronomy have also resulted in atlases of the celestial sphere or of other planets. Atlases have traditio ...

family of rockets, and was used to launch five clusters of

NOSS Noss may refer to: Places * Isle of Noss, a small, previously inhabited island in Shetland, Scotland * Noss, Caithness, near Wick, Highland, Scotland ** Noss Head Lighthouse, located nearby * Noss, Dartmouth, the name given to an Iron Age hil ...

satellites for the US

National Reconnaissance Office The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a member of the United States Intelligence Community and an agency of the United States Department of Defense which designs, builds, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the U.S. f ...

. Two flights also carried

LiPS The lips are a horizontal pair of soft appendages attached to the jaws and are the most visible part of the mouth of many animals, including humans. Mammal lips are soft, movable and serve to facilitate the ingestion of food (e.g. sucklin ...

satellites, as secondary payloads for the

United States Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. Located in Washington, DC, it was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, appl ...

. The Atlas H was a

stage and a half A single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body using only propellants and fluids and without expending tanks, engines, or other major hardware. The term usually, but not exclusively refers to reusable vehicles. ...

rocket, using the enhanced Atlas rocket designed for use as the first stage of the

Atlas G The Atlas G, also known as Atlas G Centaur-D1AR was an American expendable launch system derived from the Atlas-Centaur. It was a member of the Atlas family of rockets and was used to launch seven communication satellites during the mid to late 19 ...

rocket,Encyclopedia Astronautica - Atlas
/ref> which differed from the Atlas H in having a

Centaur A centaur ( ; ; ), occasionally hippocentaur, also called Ixionidae (), is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly. In one version o ...

upper stage. This stage was later reused as the first stage of the

Atlas I The Atlas I was a US expendable launch system manufactured by General Dynamics in the 1990s to launch a variety of satellites. It was largely a commercial rebrand of the Atlas G (although it did fly multiple government payloads), but did featur ...

. In practice, an MSD

upper stage A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own Rocket engine, engines and Rocket propellant, propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of anoth ...

was flown on all five launches.Gunter's Space Page - Atlas-H MSD
/ref> Atlas H could put a payload of 3,630 kg (8,000 lb) into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

, or a payload of 2,255 kg (4,971 lb) into a

geostationary transfer orbit In space mission design, a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) or geosynchronous transfer orbit is a highly elliptical type of geocentric orbit, usually with a perigee as low as low Earth orbit (LEO) and an apogee as high as geostationary orbit ...

Launches

The Atlas H was launched five times from Vandenberg SLC3E:

References

{{US launch systems Rockets and missiles Atlas (rocket family)