The odds of a successful catch are somewhere between slim and none, but a space shuttle solid rocket motor retrieval team will sail into the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of snaring the spent boosters from Lockheed Martin's Atlas 5 rocket.

A space shuttle solid rocket booster retrieval ship will attempt to recover the Atlas 5's boosters following launch July 17. Photo: NASA

Set to launch Thursday evening from Cape Canaveral, the third flight of Atlas 5 will speed off its pad twice as fast as its predecessors thanks to the extra kick from a pair of powerful new solid-propellant strap-on boosters.

The 67-foot tall boosters, made by Aerojet in Sacramento, California, will fire for 90 seconds. About a half-minute later, the burned out casings jettison from the rocket's first stage to plummet into the Atlantic between 104 and 110 miles off the coast.

Without the aid of parachutes, the boosters will impact the ocean five to six minutes later, approximately two miles apart, at a speed of 170 to 220 mph in waters 2,800 feet deep.

In contrast, the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters are slowed by parachutes to 50 mph, splashing down in the ocean where they are recovered after every launch for refurbishment and reuse.

The Atlas 5 motors are designed to be flown just once and never seen again. But engineers would love to get their hands on the new rockets for post-flight inspections to gauge how they performed.

"We believe there is probably a very, very, very small, remote possibility that we are going to find anything. But in the event that we do, it would be silly of us not to have something to recuperate the solids," said Adrian Laffitte, Lockheed Martin's director of Atlas launch operations at Cape Canaveral.

"We probably have a less than one percent chance that we are going to find anything. But we are going to give it a good old college try," he said in an interview about the recovery plan.

"If they survive, you don't want to be sitting here saying 'I wish I had a boat out there.'"

One of the two white solid rocket boosters is visible in this view of the Atlas 5 during a recent launch pad test. Photo: Lockheed Martin

The great unknown is what will actually happen to the boosters as they slam into the ocean.

"There is some analysis out there that says we might survive the impact. Most of the analysis says we won't. Some analysis says it is going to float and some of the analysis says it is going to sink. Since we don't have any real experience with this, it is all based on analytical data."

Despite the overwhelming odds against success, officials believe the potential wealth of information that could be reaped from the boosters is worth attempting to gather up the solids -- or at least pieces of them.

"The whole concept came when someone said 'what happens if one of these things survived and floats? We could get good data!' We said that is a good point," Laffitte recalls.

"We can get valuable data if this recovery works. If it does, we will be the first ones to be surprised."

In a deal between Lockheed Martin, prime shuttle contractor United Space Alliance and NASA, a team of 19 people will depart Port Canaveral on Wednesday aboard the solid rocket booster retrieval ship, the Liberty Star. The crew will include the expert shuttle booster recovery personnel and two Lockheed Martin workers.

A pair of aircraft, outfitted with infrared cameras, will track the falling boosters from the moment they separate from the Atlas 5 vehicle. The aircraft, along with Air Force radars, will point the retrieval team to the impact zone.

The planes, operated by a company called Air Scan, will be aloft during the countdown to help keep the hazard area clear of unauthorized boats.

A shuttle solid rocket booster is recovered in the Atlantic Ocean. Photo: NASA

"The Liberty Star has two small boats. As soon as they know where the impact point is, the smaller boats go out toward the impact point. If they see something, they secure it and try to get the (water) out of it and make sure it remains afloat while the big boat, which goes at a slower speed, gets to the location," Laffitte explained.

During a shuttle booster recovery, divers insert a plug in the rocket's nozzle, pump the casing with air to expel the water and then tow it back to port.

"If we recover the entire solid, that is what we will probably end up doing. If it goes in pieces, what we are really interested in is the nozzle part," Laffitte said.

"The shuttle guys have looked at our solids and they say they can pretty much do the similar operation -- put the plug in, take the excess water out, let it float, grab it and then tow it in."

After arriving at the shuttle solid rocket booster disassembly hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, preliminary inspections of the recovered hardware will be performed before making arrangements to transport the pieces to Aerojet.

"If we were to recover it, the reason we would get an advantage is you will have a set of data to do analysis similar to what you get when you do a hot-fire," Laffitte said.

A previous Atlas 5 solid rocket booster hot-fire test. Photo: Aerojet

Several hot-fire tests have been performed on the Atlas 5 solid rocket boosters in California during the motor's development. The experiments involved firing the motor on a horizontal test-stand to ensure the rocket's design was sound.

More than a year ago, the Atlas 5 booster failed an early hot-fire test because of a problem in the joint between the casing and nozzle. Officials called the discovery a "blessing" and were able to redesign the seal. Aerojet has since performed several successful hot-fires to qualify the solid booster for the upcoming debut launch.

On Thursday evening, Laffitte and his team at the Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center will be in contact with the Lockheed Martin workers dispatched with the retrieval team. Within two or three hours of liftoff, it should be known if anything survived the water landing for recovery.

"You got better odds at winning the lottery," Laffitte acknowledged.

But anything is possible.