Human-rating certification
Proposals and design work to human-rate the Atlas V began as early as 2006, with ULA's parent company Lockheed Martin reporting an agreement with Bigelow Aerospace that was intended to lead to commercial private trips to low Earth orbit (LEO).[28]
Human-rating design and simulation work began in earnest in 2010, with the award of US$6.7 million in the first phase of the NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) to develop an Emergency Detection System (EDS).[29]
As of February 2011, ULA had received an extension to April 2011 from NASA and was finishing up work on the EDS.[30]
NASA solicited proposals for CCP phase 2 in October 2010, and ULA proposed to complete design work on the EDS. At the time, NASA's goal was to get astronauts to orbit by 2015. Then-ULA President and CEO Michael Gass stated that a schedule acceleration to 2014 was possible if funded.[31] Other than the addition of the Emergency Detection System, no major changes were expected to the Atlas V rocket, but ground infrastructure modifications were planned. The most likely candidate for the human-rating was the N02 configuration, with no fairing, no solid rocket boosters, and dual RL10 engines on the Centaur upper stage.[31]
On July 18, 2011, NASA and ULA announced an agreement on the possibility of certifying the Atlas V to NASA's standards for human spaceflight.[32] ULA agreed to provide NASA with data on the Atlas V, while NASA would provide ULA with draft human certification requirements.[32] In 2011, the human-rated Atlas V was also still under consideration to carry spaceflight participants to the proposed Bigelow Commercial Space Station.[33]
In 2011, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) picked the Atlas V to be the booster for its still-under-development Dream Chaser crewed spaceplane.[34] The Dream Chaser was intended to launch on an Atlas V, fly a crew to the ISS, and land horizontally following a lifting-body reentry.[34] However, in late 2014 NASA did not select the Dream Chaser to be one of the two vehicles selected under the Commercial Crew competition.
On August 4, 2011, Boeing announced that it would use the Atlas V as the initial launch vehicle for its CST-100 crew capsule. CST-100 will take NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and was also intended to service the proposed Bigelow Commercial Space Station.[35][36] A three-flight test program was projected to be completed by 2015, certifying the Atlas V/CST-100 combination for human spaceflight operations.[36] The first flight was expected to include an Atlas V rocket integrated with an uncrewed CST-100 capsule,[35] the second flight an in-flight launch abort system demonstration in the middle of that year,[36] and the third flight a crewed mission carrying two Boeing test-pilot astronauts into LEO and returning them safely at the end of 2015.[36] These plans were delayed by many years and morphed along the way so that in the end, the first orbital test flight with no crew materialized in 2019, but it was a failure and needed to be reflown in 2022, the in-flight launch abort system test flight did not materialize, and the third flight, a crewed orbital test flight with two astronauts (in the end NASA's, not Boeing's astronauts) materialized in June 2024 as
In 2014, NASA selected the Boeing Starliner CST-100 spacecraft as part of the Commercial Crew Program. Atlas V is the launch vehicle for Starliner. The first launch of an uncrewed Starliner, the Boeing OFT mission, occurred atop a human-rated Atlas V on the morning of December 20, 2019; the mission failed to meet goals due to a spacecraft failure, though the Atlas V launcher performed well.[37][38] In 2022, an Atlas V launched an uncrewed Starliner capsule for the second time on Boe-OFT 2 mission; the mission was a success.[39][40]
In June 2024, on Boe-CFT mission, Atlas V carried humans into space for the first time, launching two NASA astronauts to the ISS.[41][42]
