Tag: United Launch Alliance

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United Launch Alliance’s former CEO joins Blue Origin

Image: Tory Bruno
United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno, shown here at the Space Symposium in 2016, is joining Blue Origin. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Eleven years after United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno partnered with Blue Origin to create a new rocket engine, he’s joining Jeff Bezos’ space venture as the president of Blue Origin’s newly created National Security Group.

The move could signal a major shift in the commercial space race as Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin revs up its competition with SpaceX. Bezos welcomed Bruno to his company on social media, and Bruno told Bezos that “we are going to do important work together.”

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman added his congratulations via the X social-media platform.

In its Dec. 26 announcement of the change, Blue Origin said Bruno would report to CEO Dave Limp. “We share a deep belief in supporting our nation with the best technology we can build,” Limp said in a post on X. “Tory brings unmatched experience, and I’m confident he’ll accelerate our ability to deliver on that mission.”

Bruno, 64, led ULA for 11 years following a 30-year career at Lockheed Martin. Not long after taking the reins at ULA in 2014, Bruno sat beside Bezos to announce a close collaboration on the development of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine, which is used on ULA’s Vulcan rocket as well as Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket.

Since then, SpaceX has displaced United Launch Alliance as America’s dominant launch company. In 2014, ULA executed 14 launches while SpaceX executed six. So far this year, SpaceX has registered 165 launches, while ULA has registered six.

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Amazon adds 27 satellites to its broadband constellation

Atlas V rocket liftoff with Amazon Project Kuiper satellites
An Atlas V rocket sends Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites into space. (United Launch Alliance via YouTube)

A second batch of satellites has been sent into low Earth orbit for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network, marking another significant step toward competing with SpaceX’s global Starlink network.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket launched 27 Project Kuiper satellites today at 6:54 a.m. ET (3:54 a.m. PT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. They joined 27 other satellites that were launched on an Atlas V in April.

“Many more launches ahead, but we’re 2/2 in under two months and already looking ahead to our next missions,” Rajeev Badyal, vice president of technology and head of Project Kuiper at Amazon, said in a LinkedIn posting.

Eventually, Amazon aims to deploy 3,232 satellites to provide global high-speed internet access to millions of people who are currently underserved. Under the terms of Amazon’s license from the Federal Communications Commission, half of those satellites should be deployed by mid-2026 — although that deadline may be extended.

This batch of satellites was originally scheduled for deployment a week ago, but ULA said it had to scrub the first launch attempt “due to an engineering observation of an elevated purge temperature within the booster engine.” No major technical issues cropped up during today’s countdown.

The current schedule calls for Project Kuiper to begin delivering service to customers later this year.

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Amazon sets a date for milestone Kuiper satellite launch

Delivery of Amazon Project Kuiper payload to Florida launch facility
United Launch Alliance delivers the Kuiper-1 payload to its Vertical Integration Facility in Florida. (ULA Photo)

Update: The April 9 launch attempt was scrubbed due to weather concerns, but Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites were sent into orbit on April 28.

Amazon and United Launch Alliance have set April 9 as the date for the first launch of full-scale satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet network.

ULA said the three-hour window for the Atlas V rocket’s liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida is scheduled to open at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) that day. ULA is planning a live stream of launch coverage via its website starting about 20 minutes ahead of liftoff.

Amazon said next week’s mission — known as Kuiper-1 or KA-1 (for Kuiper Atlas 1) — will put 27 Kuiper satellites into orbit at an altitude of 280 miles (450 kilometers).

ULA launched two prototype Kuiper satellites into orbit for testing in October 2023, but KA-1 will mark Amazon’s first full-scale launch of a batch of operational satellites designed to bring high-speed internet access to millions of people around the world.

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Pentagon adds Blue Origin to $5.6B launch list

Illustration: New Glenn launch
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on the rise. (Blue Origin Illustration)

The Department of Defense has put Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin in the running for a share of up to $5.6 billion in national security space launch contracts, marking a first for Jeff Bezos’ space venture.

The decision means Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket is now eligible to be selected for the Pentagon’s most sensitive launches, joining rockets offered by SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.

The ordering period for what’s known as the Phase 3 Lane 1 procurement process runs through mid-2029, with an optional five-year extension. “This award is the result of a competitive acquisition, and seven offers were received,” the Department of Defense said in today’s contract award announcement.

“We’re honored by the opportunity to compete for these National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 missions with New Glenn,” a Blue Origin spokesperson told me in an email.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, named after the late NASA astronaut John Glenn, is still under development at the company’s facilities in Florida. New Glenn’s first launch is currently set for no earlier than September. It’s expected to send a pair of robotic probes to study Mars’ magnetosphere for NASA’s EscaPADE mission.

The amounts going to each of the three launch providers in the Phase 3 Lane 1 program will be determined by the task orders that go out for specific launches over the next five years.

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Boeing’s Starliner begins its first crewed space mission

Atlas V launch with Starliner capsule
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad, sending Boeing’s Starliner capsule into space. (NASA via YouTube)

Two NASA astronauts were sent into space today to begin the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, making a shakedown cruise to the International Space Station and back after years of costly setbacks and two scrubbed countdowns.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 10:52 a.m. ET (7:52 a.m. PT), sending Starliner and its crew — NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams — to the International Space Station.

“Let’s get going,” Wilmore told Mission Control just before launch. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket.”

The Atlas V rose smoothly into a mostly sunny sky, and within minutes, the gumdrop-shaped capsule separated from the rocket’s Centaur upper stage to continue its rise to orbit.

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Computer scrubs crewed launch of Starliner space taxi

Atlas V rocket with Starliner space capsule
An Atlas V rocket, topped by Boeing’s Starliner space capsule, stands on its Florida launch pad. (NASA via YouTube)

For the second time in a month, the first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner space capsule to the International Space Station was called off while the crew members were in their seats, waiting for liftoff.

The hold was automatically triggered by the launch-pad computer system that manages the final minutes of the countdown for Starliner’s launch vehicle, an Atlas V rocket provided by United Launch Alliance.

The ground launch sequencer forced an end to today’s launch attempt at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with just three minutes and 50 seconds remaining in the countdown. Mission managers started investigating what triggered the alarm even as the launch pad team began the process of helping NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams out of the capsule.

United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said the automated launch sequencer triggered an alarm because a circuit card on one of three redundant computer racks came up about six seconds more slowly than the other two. That particular card controls activities that free up the rocket for liftoff.

“For that system, we do require all three systems to be running. … Two came up normally. The third one came up, but it was slow to come up,” Bruno said at a news briefing. “That tripped a red line that created an automatic hold.”

The NASA-ULA-Boeing team said it would pass up a launch opportunity on June 2 to give engineers more time to assess the situation. The computer problem could be due to faulty hardware, which would be relatively simple to swap out, or it could be a more complex issue involving network connections between the computers.

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Starlink on Mars? NASA is paying SpaceX to look into it

Illustration: Starlink satellites in orbit
An artist's conception shows Starlink satellites in orbit. Credit: SpaceX

NASA has given the go-ahead for SpaceX to work out a plan to adapt its Starlink broadband internet satellites for use in a Martian communication network.

The idea is one of a dozen proposals that have won NASA funding for concept studies that could end up supporting the space agency’s strategy for bringing samples from Mars back to Earth for lab analysis. The proposals were submitted by nine companies — also including Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space, Albedo Space and Redwire Space.

Awardees will be paid $200,000 to $300,000 for their reports, which are due in August. NASA says the studies could lead to future requests for proposals, but it’s not yet making any commitment to follow up.

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Moon lander gets a lift from Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin

Vulcan liftoff from launch pad
United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad. (NASA via YouTube)

Update: Hours after launch, Astrobotic reported a failure in the Peregrine lander’s propulsion system that could rule out a soft landing on the moon.

United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket lifted off for the first time tonight, making use of booster engines built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture to launch what could be the first mission to put a commercially built lander safely on the moon.

At the end of a seemingly trouble-free countdown, the rocket rose from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Jan. 8 (11:18 p.m. PT Jan. 7). It was the first-ever launch for the Vulcan rocket, and the first-ever use of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines.

Two BE-4 engines, fueled by liquefied natural gas, powered the first-stage booster spaceward with an assist from two side boosters. “We’re seeing excellent performance out of the BE-4’s,” ULA flight commentator Rob Gannon said.

About five minutes after liftoff, Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage separated from the first-stage booster and carried Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander into orbit. Spacecraft separation took place 50 minutes after launch, sending Peregrine on the next leg of its trek to the moon.

“Yee-haw! I am so thrilled,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said after separation. Soon after Bruno’s joyful whoop, Astrobotic confirmed contact with the lander.

“Big kudos and congrats to the whole team!” Bezos said in an Instagram post.

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Atlas V rocket sends Amazon’s first satellites into space

Atlas V rocket launch with Amazon Project Kuiper satellites
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket launches Amazon’s first Project Kuiper satellites. (ULA via YouTube)

Amazon’s first satellites were launched today on a mission aimed at testing out the hardware and software for the Seattle company’s worldwide Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation.

Two prototype satellites — known as KuiperSat 1 and 2 — rode a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida into space at 2:06 p.m. ET (11:06 a.m. PT).

United Launch Alliance provided updates on what it called the Protoflight mission via its X / Twitter account. In a post-launch statement, ULA declared the mission to be successful and said that the Atlas V “precisely” delivered the satellites to orbit.

The satellites were sent into 311-mile-high (500-kilometer-high) orbits with a 30-degree inclination. In a status update, Amazon said Project Kuiper’s mission operations center in Redmond, Wash., confirmed first contact with both satellites within an hour after launch.

“Five plus years in the making. So much care, persistence, boldness and beauty,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said in a posting to Instagram and Threads. “What an amazing endeavor. … Big milestone and much more to come!”

Project Kuiper, an ambitious program that was publicly unveiled in 2019, aims to provide broadband internet access — and satellite-based access to Amazon Web Services — to millions of people who are currently underserved. Amazon plans to use the prototypes — which were built at Project Kuiper’s HQ in Redmond — to test the hardware on the spacecraft, as well as ground operations and customer terminals.

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Amazon satellites take their places for milestone launch

Amazon Kuiper Prototype payload arrives at ULA's Vertical Integration Facility
Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite payload arrives for stacking in Florida. (United Launch Alliance Photo)

United Launch Alliance says the first prototype satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network have been placed atop their Atlas V rocket, with launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida set for Oct. 6.

The launch window will open on that day at 2 p.m. ET (11 a.m. PT), ULA said today in an online update.

Liftoff will mark a milestone for Project Kuiper, which aims to put more than 3,200 satellites into orbit to provide broadband internet access to millions of people around the world who are currently underserved. Kuiper is seen as a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, which already has more than 2 million subscribers.

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