United Launch Alliance plans 10 launches this year with Atlas and Delta rockets to dispatch payloads to space for science, Earth observation, navigation, communications and military reconnaissance missions.

The Atlas 5 rocket's Centaur upper stage is stacked at Complex 41 for the February launch of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA-KSC

Seven of the launches will blast off from Cape Canaveral and three missions are slated to originate from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., a ULA spokesperson said.

The company's 2010 manifest is down from 16 flawless flights last year, mostly due to the drop in launches of the medium-class Delta 2 rocket, which flew eight times in 2009. Just one Delta 2 mission is on the books this year to launch Italy's COSMO-SkyMed 4 satellite from California in September.

The schedule begins next month with the Feb. 9 launch of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral to keep tabs on the sun. Liftoff is scheduled for 1530 GMT (10:30 a.m. EST).

On March 1, a Delta 4 rocket with two solid rocket boosters will lift off from Florida with the GOES P weather satellite for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Launch will occur at 2319 GMT (6:19 p.m. EST).

A secretive Air Force space plane called the X-37B, or Orbital Test Vehicle, will launch April 19 from the Cape on an Atlas 5 rocket. The X-37B will be shrouded inside a five-meter wide nose cone during launch and will return to Earth to land like an aircraft on a runway.

The first satellite in the new generation of Global Positioning System satellites is planned for launch on another Delta 4 vehicle at 0719 GMT (3:19 a.m. EDT) on May 13. After arriving in orbit, the spacecraft will enter the GPS constellation to beam navigation and timing signals to U.S. troops and civilian users around the world.

The Delta 4 rocket for the GOES P launch is erected last week at Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral. Credit: NASA-KSC

The third Atlas 5 flight of 2010 is expected to launch the first Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite for the U.S. Air Force this summer. Air Force officials did not provide a launch date, but liftoff is penciled in for some time in the 3rd Quarter of the calendar year.

The sole Delta 2 launch is on track for September with the fourth COSMO-SkyMed radar reconnaissance satellite for Italy. That mission will take off from ULA's West Coast facility in California.

A trio of top secret spy satellite launches are booked for this fall, including the first launch of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg around Dec. 1.

That flight will be preceded by a Delta 4-Heavy launch for the National Reconnaissance Office from Florida in October. That same month, an Atlas 5 will send into orbit a classified U.S. government payload from California, if schedules hold.

ULA plans to end the year with one more launch, either another GPS spacecraft or the the first SBIRS early warning satellite headed for geosynchronous orbit. Those missions would use a Delta 4 or an Atlas 5 rocket, respectively.