The Alabama-built Atlas V rocket successfully made its way into space Wednesday after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying a new GPS satellite.
The Atlas V was built at the United Launch Alliance facility in Decatur, Ala.
Wednesday’s success marked the 50th launch for Atlas V. According to USA Today, the GPS it was transporting “provides location and timing information to military and civilian users, typically accurate to within several feet and a billionth of a second. They enable navigation services that broadly impact day-to-day activities such as mapping a car’s route on your smartphone.”
The successful launch comes just a day after the Anteres Rocket, an unmanned spacecraft that was supposed to be delivering equipment to the International Space Station, exploded over a NASA site in Virginia seconds after takeoff. No one was injured.
According to myfoxal.com, the rocket was carrying an experiment for testing organics solvents in water that students at Alabama’s Gadsden State Community College had been working on for two years. Audrey Webb, a Gadsden State professor who traveled to Virginia to witness the launch told Fox 6 WBRC that they are going to rebuild the experiment.
Watch the explosion below.
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