ULA
Latest
Amazon's first Project Kuiper internet satellites will launch on Vulcan Centaur's maiden flight
ULA's Vulcan Centaur will also ferry Astrobotic's lunar lander to space.
Amazon orders up to 83 launches for its Project Kuiper internet satellites
Amazon has secured as many as 83 launches for Project Kuiper internet satellites from rocket companies like Blue Origin.
NASA launches mission to explore Solar System 'fossils'
NASA has launched Lucy, a mission that will explore the 'fossils' of Solar System planetary formation among Jupiter's asteroids.
Watch ULA abort a rocket launch at the last moment
The United Launch Alliance had to abort a launch at the last possible moment,
How NASA knows when it's a 'go' for launch
The launch window -- the span of time that a rocket can successfully launch during -- will therefore be different for putting an Earth-observing satellite into LEO versus launching a Dragon Capsule to precisely rendezvous with the ISS.
NASA delays Mars rover launch until at least July 30th
NASA and ULA have postponed the Mars Perseverance rover's launch until July 30th due to launch vehicle delays.
Senate bill offers more incentives for private spaceflight
The Senate's proposed American Space Commerce Act would give private spaceflight companies more incentives, including tax breaks.
X-37B space plane launches on its most ambitious mission to date
The X-37B space plane has launched carrying its most experiments ever -- and an endurance record to challenge.
SpaceX sues over 'wrongly awarded' Air Force rocket contracts
To say that SpaceX was unhappy with losing out on the US Air Force's rocket development contracts would be an understatement. The company has sued the US government under claims that the Air Force "wrongly awarded" contracts to Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and United Launch Alliance. The military branch handed out offers to the competition despite their "unproven rockets" and "unstated metrics," while allegedly ignoring SpaceX's own real-world record. The company had completed numerous missions with its Falcon rockets, according to the lawsuit, but was deemed "highest risk" because of its largely untested Starship.
NASA's upcoming Moon mission may use commercial rockets
Today, in a surprising move at a Senate hearing, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine proposed that Orion, NASA's upcoming crew vehicle, may fly aboard a commercial rocket. This was the first time that the possibility had been broached by the NASA administrator.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin beats key rival to rocket engine deal
Blue Origin is best known for its own rocket programs, but it just scored a deal that could make it an important name in the spaceflight industry. United Launch Alliance has chosen Blue Origin's BE-4 engine (two of them, to be exact) to power the booster stage its next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is due to launch in mid-2020. Jeff Bezos' outfit won't be the only rocket vendor involved, but it crucially beat out Aerojet Rocketdyne -- a behemoth in the industry that had tried to pressure ULA into avoiding Blue Origin tech altogether.
NASA launches Parker Solar Probe in mission to 'touch' the Sun
After a few delays, the Sun-chasing Parker Solar Probe is on its way. NASA launched the spacecraft aboard a ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket at 3:31AM Eastern this morning (August 12th) and confirmed that the vessel was healthy at 5:33AM. The probe still has a ways to go before it's conducting scientific studies. It'll spend its first week in space deploying its high-gain antenna, the first part of its electric field antennas and its magnetometer. In early September, the probe will start a roughly four-week instrument shakedown to be sure it's ready for science gathering.
Watch the launch of NASA's Parker Solar Probe Sunday morning (update)
Tomorrow, August 11th, NASA is scheduled to launch a historic mission called the Parker Solar Probe. The spacecraft will launch on a ULA Delta IV Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 3:33 AM ET on Saturday morning; the launch window will last for 65 minutes. You can watch it happen on the NASA TV live stream below.
NASA satellite launch promises accurate week-long forecasts
NASA and NOAA know that multi-day weather forecasts can be crucial to tracking hurricanes and their aftermath, and they're about to significantly boost the reliability of those forecasts. They just launched JPSS-1 (Joint Polar Satellite System-1), the first of a series of NOAA satellites that should improve the accuracy of weather forecasts extending as long as a whole week. It includes five upgraded instruments (including an infrared imaging sensor and a microwave sounder) that can track weather-influencing factors with exacting detail, such as atmospheric temperature, clouds, ice cover, ocean colors and volcanic ash.
Air Force reveals difference between ULA and SpaceX launch prices
The US Air Force has revealed how much the government can save by having SpaceX launch some of its satellites instead of relying purely on United Launch Alliance. Launch prices used to be discussed in vague terms until the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act required the Department of Defense to include a budget for national security space programs in its annual reports. Now, the Air Force's budget request (PDF) for the next few years, which Ars Technica got its hands on, finally has solid numbers we can look at: It shows that the division expects to pay as much as $423 million per launch by the year 2021 if it allows ULA -- a Boeing and Lockheed joint venture -- to have a monopoly on its launches.
ULA justifies pricey space launches with 'RocketBuilder' site
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V is the world's most reliable rocket, with a 100 percent mission success rate over 67 total missions. However, at a base launch rate of $109 million, it's a lot more costly compared to newcomer SpaceX, which has a starting price of $62 million. The raw launch is not the only cost, though, so ULA launched the RocketBuilder website to let potential clients, the press, academics and students configure a rocket like "building a car."
Watch NRO's spy satellite blast off to space at 1:30PM Eastern
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has a pretty significant launch scheduled for today. It will attempt to send the spy satellite-carrying Delta-IV Heavy rocket to space again after scrubbing its original launch on June 9th due to bad weather. This is only the massive rocket's ninth flight after the first one blasted off in 2004. The Delta-IV Heavy is capable of packing 14,900 pounds of payload and can ferry satellites to geosynchronous orbit. While we know that it's an NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) mission codenamed NROL-37, its other details are actually classified.
SpaceX wins its first military launch contract
Elon Musk has been fighting to be treated with the same level of respect as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, and it looks like his persistence has paid off. Reuters is reporting that the US Air Force has handed SpaceX a contract worth $83 million to launch the next GPS satellite into orbit. It's a big deal, because until now, only Lockheed and Boeing (through the United Launch Alliance) have been permitted to fling objects into the heavens on the Air Force's behalf. The launch will take place in May 2018 from Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket, although while Musk has won the battle, he might also be well on the way to winning the war.
Inflatable space stations could orbit the Earth by 2020
The latest SpaceX launch ferried not just supplies for the ISS, but also an inflatable module designed to add a small living room on the space station. That module was made by Bigelow Aerospace, which has just announced that it teamed up with United Launch Alliance to send its much, much bigger inflatable stations called B330 to Low Earth Orbit. One B330 can add a 330-cubic-meter (or 12,000-cubic-foot) living space to the ISS -- that's 30 percent of its total size, whereas the model that piggybacked on Falcon 9 can only expand the station by five percent.
Boeing and Jeff Bezos move closer to putting US rockets in orbit
United Launch Associates (ULA), the rocket enterprise from Boeing and Lockheed, has ramped up its commitment to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket engines. The two companies agreed to expand production capability of Origin's BE-4 rocket motor, "an important step toward building (them) at the production rate needed for the Vulcan launch vehicle," said Bezos. Last year, the two companies formed a pact to develop an engine that that can replace the Russian-built RD-180 engines originally planned for Vulcan -- ULA's successor to the Atlas V. Due to a US congressional ban on Russian products, ULA can no longer purchase RD-180s.
