ULA Archives - The Enterprise Orbit

Launch politics in an increasingly competitive global market

NOTE: This story originally appeared in the Low Down, our free weekly ebrief. Subscribe for FREE to receive our take on the latest news, enabling tech and emerging markets in the commercial space sector each week. Anti-competitive politics is rearing its head as the global launch industry undergoes significant shifts in its competitive landscape and incumbent providers are struggling to keep up. Ariane Group’s CEO Alain Charmeau complained about dropping

Big rocket builders are skeptical small launchers will find customers

As the pool of small launch vehicles grows, larger launch providers continue to express skepticism about whether the new crop of small vehicle startups will have enough customers to sustain them and their business models. Small launch vehicles promise to further reduce barriers of entry to space for non-traditional customers by offering dedicated launches for lighter payloads at lower price points. But incumbent providers SpaceX, ULA and others – which

Astrobotic’s lunar delivery service set to launch in 2020

Lunar logistics startup Astrobotic is hoping to become the world’s first lunar delivery service. The company, spun out of a project at Carnegie Mellon University, was launched about a decade ago in order to participate in the Google Lunar XPrize. “Our goal is to make the moon accessible to the world,” John Thornton, Astrobotic’s CEO, told The Downlink. “We are building a DHL delivery service to take payloads from all

Blue Origin’s BE-4 could propel the next stage of space exploration

After five years of development, Jeff Bezos announced in Twitter this week Blue Origin has successfully completed a hot fire test of its fully reusable BE-4 engine. The hot fire test marks an important milestone for both Blue Origin and the next step in human exploration of space. https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/921114359119560704 Blue Origin's orbital rocket, the New Glenn, will use seven BE-4 engines in its first stage, and a single BE-4 in

‘Lunar. Sooner’: ULA & Bigelow propose 2022 launch for lunar depot

Bigelow Aerospace and ULA have announced plans to put Bigelow’s B330 expandable habitat module into low lunar orbit by the end of 2022. Bigelow said the habitat will serve as a lunar depot and support infrastructure for other deep space missions. The commercial habitat will launch on ULA’s latest Vulcan rocket. The announcement expands an earlier partnership to launch one of Bigelow's B330 habitats into low Earth orbit aboard ULA's

Off Earth Mining Forum: Space mining could arrive in next decade

Space mining transactions could appear within the next decade, according to experts at the third annual Off Earth Mining Forum, held in Sydney, Australia, this week. Andrew Dempster, director of the Australian Center for Space Engineering Research, made the bold prediction this week to Xinhua media at the forum. The near-term opportunity for space mining will center on extracting water from sources like the Moon or Mars in order to

ULA’s Atlas V rocket is fueled up and ready to launch

By Kendra Chamberlain Live Webcast of the launch, hosted by ULA: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi2_yIFylxo] United Launch Alliance (ULA) will conduct its first rocket launch of 2017 tonight at Cape Canaveral Air Force station in Florida. The flight window opens at 7:46 pm ET (0046 GMT). UPDATE: ULA successfully launched the Atlas V, and delivered the SBIRS GEO 3 satellite into orbit on January 20. (more…)

ULA’s Atlas V launch will take Air Force missile tracking satellite into orbit

By Kendra Chamberlain The latest satellite addition to the US Air Force’s space based Infrared system (SBIRS) will launch this week from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The $1.2 billion geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) satellite, made by Lockheed Martin, is the third installment to the Air Force's surveillance system that’s designed to track enemy missile launches. UPDATE: The ULA Atlas V rocket successfully launched and