NASA News Release: A United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket launches with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)satellite onboard from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. on Wednesday, July 2, 2014. OCO-2 will measure the global distribution of carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. Image Credit: […]
Last week, a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee passed an FY 2015 bill for NASA, one with ominous portents for the Commercial Crew program. As pointed out in several media sources, the bill contains a “poison pill” provision which appears to be deliberately calculated to increase the administrative costs of the program to contractors, with SpaceX […]
The battle over the USAF Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program took a new turn Thursday evening with a blistering series of tweets from Elon Musk, made in response to a report regarding a contracting official deeply involved in the award. The story, linked to in the Musk tweet says in part: “From March 2011 […]
Image Credit: ULA Doing what it undeniably does best, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lofted a National Reconnaissance Office satellite into orbit this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The classified NROL-33 launch lifted off at 9:09 AM EDT this morning aboard the most basic version of the Atlas-V, the 401, which includes a […]
Yesterday, the Court of Federal Appeals issued a temporary injunction barring United Launch Alliance from making further purchases or receiving shipments of Russian built RD-180 rocket engines until the matter can be reviewed by three different oversight agencies. The order came as a result of the lawsuit filed Monday by SpaceX against the USAF/ULA EELV […]
Well, it wasn’t about Mars Colonial Transport, or even the official reveal of Dragon 2.0. Instead today’s SpaceX press conference held at the National Press Club, and delivered by Elon Musk, was primarily to announce the fact that SpaceX is filing a lawsuit in the US Court of Federal Claims in an attempt to halt […]
“Over the past year, the 80 programs of the 2013 portfolio have grown by a total of $12.6 billion, a net cost increase nearly all attributable to the significant procurement cost associated with one program—the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle.” And that’s just from the front page. In what is becoming a repeated annual refrain, the […]
RD-180 What exquisite timing. In a week where the Russian built RD-180 main engine, used to power the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, has come under heavy scrutiny, word comes out that Orbital Sciences has dropped its lawsuit against ULA over access to the engine. From a Space News article on the issue: “The parties […]
On Thursday evening, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 booster launched NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-L on its way to geostationary transfer orbit. After testing, the spacecraft will move to its permanent station at 49 degrees West where it will join the rest of the TDRS fleet in providing space to ground […]
On December 19th, NASA awarded the launch contract for the 2016 Mars Insight Mission to United Launch Alliance, to be carried out aboard an Atlas V 401, for $160 million. The award is interesting for a number of reasons. In the first place, ULA does not like to reveal its launch prices if there any […]
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