NASA Launches Rocket at Cape for Final Time

An era ended Monday with the last NASA launch of an unmanned rocket from this spaceport, where responsibility for sending payloads into orbit is being turned over to private industry after 400 liftoffs in 31 years.

An Atlas-Centaur vaulted skyward at 4:56 a.m. with a $125-million communications satellite to link military commands with land, sea and air forces and for use by the President in times of crisis.

From now on, when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration needs an unmanned rocket, it will have to buy launch services from McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics and Martin Marietta.

The space agency will continue to launch manned space shuttles from Cape Canaveral, where NASA got its start and where it has launched nearly all of its rockets.

NASA has one unmanned rocket left for launch, but it will carry its payload, a scientific satellite, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch is scheduled for November.

Monday’s unmanned launch was the 448th for NASA, dating from a Thor Able, which lifted off Oct. 11, 1958, hoisting the Pioneer 1 probe toward a flyby of the moon. It failed, as did several other early launches. But the agency’s overall success rate is better than 90%.