X Prize Foundation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Founded	1995
Focus	Public competitions
Location	Culver City, California
Area served	Energy and environment, exploration, global development, learning, life sciences
Method	Revolution through competition
Owner	Peter Diamandis
Key people	Peter Diamandis, Founder and Executive Chairman Robert K. Weiss, Vice Chairman Anousheh Ansari, CEO
Website	www.xprize.org
Formerly called	XPRIZE Foundation

XPRIZE is a nonprofit organization that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit humanity. Their Board of Trustees include James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, Ratan Tata among others.

The XPRIZE mission is to bring about "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentivized competition. It fosters high-profile competitions to motivate individuals, companies and organizations across all disciplines to develop innovative ideas and technologies that help solve the grand challenges that restrict humanity's progress.

The highest-profile XPRIZE to date was the Ansari X Prize relating to spacecraft development awarded in 2004. This prize was intended to inspire research and development into technology for space exploration.

Background

SpaceShipOne Takeoff

 

The first, titled the Ansari XPRIZE, was presented on November 6, 2004.

 

The first XPRIZE – the Ansari XPRIZE – was inspired by the Orteig Prize, a $25,000 prize offered in 1919 by French hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first nonstop flight between New York City and Paris. In 1927, underdog Charles Lindbergh won the prize in a modified single-engine Ryan aircraft called the Spirit of St. Louis. In total, nine teams spent $400,000 in pursuit of the Orteig Prize. 

In 1996, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis offered a $10-million prize to the first privately financed team that could build and fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilometers into space twice within two weeks. The contest, later titled the Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight, motivated 26 teams from seven nations to invest more than $100 million in pursuit of the $10 million purse. On October 4, 2004, the Ansari XPRIZE was won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, who successfully completed the contest in their spacecraft SpaceShipOne. The prize was awarded in a ceremony at the Saint Louis Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. As of 2011, the Science Center maintains numerous exhibits about the XPRIZE. 

The foundation has also created the XPRIZE Cup rocket challenge competition.

XPRIZE unifying principles

XPRIZES are monetary rewards to incentivize three primary goals:

• Attract investment from outside the sector that takes new approaches to difficult problems.
• Create significant results that are real and meaningful. Competitions have measurable goals, and are created to promote adoption of the innovation.
• Cross national and disciplinary boundaries to encourage teams around the world to invest the intellectual and financial capital required to solve difficult challenges.

Other organizations such as the Nobel Prize committee award prizes and financial rewards to individuals or organizations that produce novel advances in science, medicine and technology. One difference between the XPRIZES and other similar organizations is awarding prizes based on the first to achieve objective 'finish line' requirements rather than a selection committee discussing the relative merits of different endeavors. For instance, the Archon Genomics XPRIZE target was to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days or less, with less than one error per 100,000 DNA base pairs, covering 98% of the genome and costing less than $10,000 per genome (this prize was cancelled because it was outpaced by innovation). 

The prize can increase attention to endeavors that otherwise might not receive much publicity. For example, attempts in the recent Lunar Lander competition have been well publicized in the media, increasing visibility of both the foundation and the participants. 

With the Ansari XPRIZE, XPRIZE established a model in which offering a prize for achieving a specific goal can stimulate entrepreneurial investment. Since then, new challenges have expanded into a range of other fields. XPRIZE is developing new prizes in Exploration (Space and Oceans), Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, Education and Global Development. Some hope the prizes will help improve lives, create equity of opportunity and stimulate new, important discoveries.

Prizes and events overseen

As of January 2018, there are seven completed contests, eight active contests and one contest that has been canceled.

Past contests

1996–2004 Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight

Astronaut Mike Melvill after his award-winning September 29, 2004 spaceflight

 

The Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight was the first prize from the foundation. It successfully challenged teams to build private spaceships capable of carrying three people and fly two times within two weeks to open the space frontier. The first part of the Ansari XPRIZE requirements was fulfilled by Mike Melvill on September 29, 2004 On SpaceShipOne, a spacecraft designed by Burt Rutan and financed by Paul Allen, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft. On that ship, Melvill broke the 100-kilometer (62.5 mi) mark, internationally recognized as the boundary of outer space, winning the prize. Brian Binnie completed the second part of the requirements on October 4, 2004. As a result, US$10 million was awarded to the winner, but more than $100 million was invested in new technologies in pursuit of the prize. Today, Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and others are creating a personal spaceflight industry.

Awarding this first prize gave XPRIZE as much publicity as the winners themselves. After the 2004 success there was ample media coverage to afford both Scaled Composites and XPRIZE additional support for them to expand and continue to pursue their aims. Following this early success several other XPRIZES were announced that have yet to be awarded despite various attempts to meet the requirements.

The Ansari XPRIZE won the Space Foundation's Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award in 2005. The award is given annually to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to public awareness of space programs.

2007–2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE

The goal of the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE was to design, build and race super-efficient vehicles that achieve 100 MPGe (2.35 liter/100 kilometer) efficiency, produce less than 200 grams/mile well-to-wheel CO₂ equivalent emissions, and could be manufactured for the mass market.

The winners of the competition were announced on September 16, 2010.

• Team Edison2 won the $5 million Mainstream competition with its four-passenger Very Light Car, obtaining 102.5 MPGe running on E85 fuel.
• Team Li-Ion Motors won the $2.5 million Alternative Side-by-Side competition with their aerodynamic Wave-II electric vehicle achieving 187 MPGe.
• Team X-Tracer Switzerland won the $2.5 million Alternative Tandem competition with their 205.3 MPGe faired electric motorcycle.

2010–2011 Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE

The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE was introduced on July 29, 2010. The $1 million prize had a goal to inspire a new generation of innovative solutions that will speed the pace of cleaning up seawater surface oil resulting from spillage from ocean platforms, tankers, and other sources. The team of Elastec/American Marine won the challenge by developing a device that skims oil off water three times faster than previously existing technology.

2006–2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander XCHALLENGE

The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander XCHALLENGE (NGLLXPC) was a competition (co-hosted by NASA) to build precise, efficient small rocket systems. It was introduced in 2006 and awarded on November 5, 2009 in Washington D.C. to Masten Space Systems, led by David Masten, the top $1 million prize, while Armadillo Aerospace, led by id Software founder John Carmack took home the second place prize of $500,000, plus an additional $500,000 in 2008.

2012–2014 The Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE

The Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE goal is accelerating the use of sensors and sensing technology to tackle health care problems and find ways for people to monitor and maintain their personal well-being. It was composed of two distinct Challenges held in 2013 and 2014. It was announced in 2012 and 12 finalists announced in 2013. On November 11, 2014 the winner was named and prize purses totaling $2.25 million were awarded.

2013–2015 The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE

The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE is a $2 million competition to improve our understanding of ocean acidification. On July 20, 2015 the winners of the challenge were announced.

2011–2017 Tricorder XPRIZE

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE was announced on May 10, 2011, and is sponsored by Qualcomm Foundation. It was officially launched on January 10, 2012. The $10 million prize is awarded for creating a mobile device that can "diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians". The name is taken from the tricorder device in Star Trek which can be used to instantly diagnose ailments.

2007–2018 Google Lunar XPRIZE

The Google Lunar XPRIZE was introduced on September 13, 2007. The goal of the prize was similar to that of the Ansari XPRIZE, to inspire a new generation of private investment in space exploration and technology. The challenge called for teams to compete in successfully launching, landing, and operating a rover on the lunar surface. The prize was going to award $20 million to the first team to land a rover on the moon that successfully roved more than 500 meters and transmitted back high definition images and video. There was a $5 million second prize, as well as $5 million in potential bonus prizes for extra features such as roving long distances (greater than 5,000 meters) capturing images of man-made objects on the moon, or surviving a lunar night.

On January 23, 2018, the prize ended when no team was able to schedule, confirm and pay for a launch attempt. The X Prize Foundation announced that "no team would be able to make a launch attempt to reach the Moon by the 31 March 2018 deadline... and the US$30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE will go unclaimed."

2016-2018 Water Abundance XPRIZE

On October 20, 2018, the XPRIZE Foundation awarded The Water Abundance XPRIZE, which launched on October 24, 2016 with a purse of $1.75 million provided by the Tata Group and Australian Aid, to the Skysource/Skywater Alliance based in Venice, California, who received a grand prize of $1.5 million. An additional award of $150,000 went to the second place team, JMCC WING, based in South Point, Hawaii, to acknowledge the team’s ingenuity in developing a unique technological approach. Over a 24 hour period, the Skysource/Skywater Alliance successfully extracted over 2,000 liters of water using only renewable energy, at a cost of USD $0.02 per liter. The team, led by architect David Hertz, intends to use the award to productize the system to address water scarcity in the developing world. 

Canceled contests

2006–2013 Archon Genomics XPRIZE

The Archon Genomics XPRIZE, the second XPRIZE to be offered by the foundation, was announced October 4, 2006. The goal of the Archon Genomics XPRIZE was to greatly reduce the cost and increase the speed of human genome sequencing to create a new era of personalized, predictive and preventive medicine, eventually transforming medical care from reactive to proactive. The $10 million prize purse was promised to the first team that can build a device and use it to sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days or less, with an accuracy of no more than one error in every 100,000 bases sequenced, with sequences accurately covering at least 98% of the genome, and at a recurring cost of no more than $1,000 per genome. 

If more than one team attempted the competition at the same time, and more than one team fulfilled all the criteria, then teams would have been ranked according to the time of completion. No more than three teams would have been ranked and would have shared the purse in the following manner: $7.5 million to the winner and $2.5 million to the second place team if two teams were successful, or $7 million, $2 million and $1 million if three teams are successful. 

Actual competition events were originally scheduled to take place twice a year with all eligible teams given the opportunity to make an attempt, starting at precisely the same time as the other teams. This was changed to a single competition scheduled for September 5, 2013 to October 1, 2013, which was canceled on August 22, 2013. The rationale for the change was articulated by the CEO: "Today, companies can do this for less than $5,000 per genome, in a few days or less – and are moving quickly towards the goals we set for the prize. For this reason, we have decided to cancel an XPRIZE for the first time ever." A public debate concerning the validity and potential implications of the cancellation was published March 27, 2014.

Active contests

2014 The Global Learning XPRIZE

The Global Learning XPRIZE, launched in September 2014, is a $15-million prize to create mobile apps to improve reading, writing, and arithmetic in developing nations. Each application will be developed during an 18-month period and the top five teams will receive $1 million each, with each of the winning apps being made available under an open source license. The finalist of the group, that then develops an app producing the highest performance gains, will win an additional $10 million top prize.

2014 IBM Watson A.I. XPRIZE

The A.I. XPRIZE was announced as having an aim to use an artificial intelligence system to deliver a compelling TED talk. Diamandis hopes to contrast the benevolent value of AI against the dystopian point of view that sometimes enter AI conversations. The winning team of the contest, which is scheduled for 2020, will be determined by the audience.

2015 Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE

On December 14, 2015, Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of X Prize, announced the launch of a new $7 million prize that will be a three-year global competition that challenges researchers to build better technologies for mapping Earth's seafloor.

2015 NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE

On September 29, 2015, Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of X Prize, announced the launch of a $20 million prize for a 4.5-year competition on testing technologies which converts CO₂ into products with the highest net value to reduce carbon dioxide emissions of either a coal or a natural gas power plant. Round three began in April 2018 as the 27 semifinalists were cut down to ten finalists; each receiving an equal share of $5 million milestone prize money. Five teams will compete at in coal-fired power plant in Gillette, Wyoming and the remaining five teams will compete at a natural gas-fired power plant in Alberta, Canada. In February 2020 this operational round will conclude and winners will be announced the following month.

2015 Adult Literacy XPRIZE

Find solutions how to improve literacy proficiency of adults in reading within a 12-month period. The challenge has been announced on June 8, 2015 and is awarded with $7 million by Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. The winners will be announced in January 2019.

2016 Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE

The Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE was launched on October 24, 2016 and has a $1 million purse. The goal for competing teams is to develop a safety device for women that can autonomously and inconspicuously trigger an emergency alert while transmitting information to a network of community responders.

2018 ANA Avatar XPRIZE

The $10 million ANA Avatar XPRIZE is a four-year competition focused on accelerating the integration of emerging and exponential technologies into a multipurpose avatar system that will seamlessly transport human skills and experience to the exact location where and when they are needed.

Xprize Foundation India

Considering the potential of Indian talent, X Prize Foundation set up a trust/NGO in November 2014 in Mumbai, India.

Board of Directors

The XPRIZE Foundation is governed by a Board of Directors that determine the annual roadmaps and act as stewards for the Foundation. As of January 2018, the Board of Directors are:

• Anousheh Ansari, Director.
• Amir Ansari, Director.
• Avi Reichental, Director
• Jack Bader, Director.
• Peter Diamandis, Founder and Executive Chairman.
• Gil Elbaz, Director.
• Eric Esrailian, Director.
• John B. Frank, Director.
• Salim Ismail, Director.
• James Manyika, Director
• Gregg E. Maryniak, Secretary.
• Lauren Selig, Director.
• Jeffrey L. Shames, Director.
• Marcus Shingles, Fmr. Chief Executive Officer.
• J. Barry Thompson, Treasurer.
• Robert K. Weiss, Vice Chairman.

Board of Trustees

The XPRIZE Foundation also has a Board of Trustees that provides insights on new technologies, grand challenges requiring significant innovation, and other areas that lend themselves to prize philanthropy. A sample of the Trustees includes:

• James Cameron, Trustee.
• Jim Gianopulos, Trustee.
• Arianna Huffington, Trustee.
• Dean Kamen, Trustee.
• Ray Kurzweil, Trustee.
• Erik Lindbergh, Trustee.
• Larry Page, Trustee.
• Ratan Tata, Trustee.

Virgin Galactic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IATA ICAO Callsign – VGX Galactic
Founded	2004
Operating bases	Spaceport America Mojave Air & Space Port
Parent company	Virgin Group
Headquarters	Mojave, California
Key people	Richard Branson (Chairman) George Whitesides (CEO) Jon Campagna (CFO) Mike Moses (President) Julia Hunter (Vice President)
Website	www.virgingalactic.com

Virgin Galactic is a spaceflight company within the Virgin Group. It is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. Virgin Galactic plans to provide orbital human spaceflights as well. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft, is air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two.

Virgin Galactic's founder, Richard Branson, had initially suggested that he hoped to see a maiden flight by the end of 2009, but this date has been delayed on a number of occasions, most recently by the October 2014 in-flight loss of SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise. Branson stated that Virgin Galactic was “in the best position in the world” to provide rocket-powered, point-to-point 3000 mph air travel on Earth. In October 2017, Branson suggested that he could travel to space aboard a SpaceShipTwo within six months. On 13 December 2018 VSS Unity reached an altitude of 82.7 km (51.4 miles), officially entering outer space by US standards.

History and operations

Formation and early activities

Virgin Galactic was founded in 2004 by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who had previously founded Virgin Atlantic airline and the Virgin Group, and who had a long personal history of balloon and surface record-breaking activities. As part of Branson's promotion of the firm, he has added a variation of the Virgin Galactic livery to his personal business jet, the Dassault Falcon 900EX "Galactic girl" (G-GALX).

The Spaceship Company

The Spaceship Company (TSC) was founded by Richard Branson through Virgin Group (which owned 70%), and Burt Rutan through Scaled Composites (which owned 30%), to build commercial spaceships and launch aircraft for space travel. From the time of TSC’s formation in 2005, the launch customer was Virgin Galactic, which contracted to purchase five SpaceShipTwos and two WhiteKnightTwos; Scaled Composites was contracted to develop and build the initial prototypes of WK2 and SS2, and then TSC began production of the follow-on vehicles beginning in 2008. By July 2014, TSC was only halfway through the completion of a second SpaceShipTwo, and had commenced construction of a second WhiteKnightTwo.

Commencement of sub-space test flights

In July 2008, Richard Branson predicted the maiden space voyage would take place within 18 months. In October 2009, Virgin Galactic announced that initial flights would take place from Spaceport America "within two years." Later that year, Scaled Composite announced that White Knight Two's first SpaceShipTwo captive flights would be in early 2010. Both aircraft did fly together in March 2010. The credibility of the earlier promises of launch dates by Virgin Galactic were brought into question in October 2014 by its chief executive, George Whitesides, when he told The Guardian: “We’ve changed dramatically as a company. When I joined in 2010 we were mostly a marketing organisation. Right now we can design, build, test and fly a rocket motor all by ourselves and all in Mojave, which I don’t think is done anywhere else on the planet”.

On December 7, 2009, SpaceShipTwo was unveiled at the Mojave Spaceport. Branson told the 300 people attending, each of whom had booked rides at $200,000 each, that flights would begin “in 2011”. However, in April 2011, Branson announced further delays, saying “I hope 18 months from now, we’ll be sitting in our spaceship and heading off into space”. By February 2012, SpaceShipTwo had completed 15 test flights attached to White Knight Two, and an additional 16 glide tests, the last of which took place in September 2011. A rocket-powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo took place on April 29, 2013, with an engine burn of 16 seconds duration. The brief flight began at an altitude of 47,000 feet, and reached a maximum altitude of 55,000 feet. While the SS2 achieved a speed of Mach 1.2 (920 mph), this was less than half the 2,000 mph speed predicted by Richard Branson. SpaceShipTwo’s second supersonic flight achieved a speed of 1,100 mph for 20 seconds; while this was an improvement, it fell far short of the 2,500 mph for 70 seconds required to carry six passengers into space. However, Branson still announced his spaceship would be capable of "launching 100 satellites every day".

On May 14, 2013, Richard Branson stated on Virgin Radio Dubai's Kris Fade Morning Show that he would be aboard the first public flight of SpaceShipTwo, which had again been rescheduled, this time to December 25, 2013. "Maybe I’ll dress up as Father Christmas", Branson said. The third rocket-powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo took place on January 10, 2014 and successfully tested the spaceship’s Reaction Control System (RCS) and the newly installed thermal protection coating on the vehicle’s tail booms. Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said “We are progressively closer to our target of starting commercial service in 2014". Interviewed by The Observer at the time of her 90th birthday in July 2014, Branson’s mother, Eve, told reporter Elizabeth Day of her intention of going to space herself. Asked when that might be, she replied: “I think it’s the end of the year”, adding after a pause, “It’s always ‘the end of the year’ ”.

In September 2014, Richard Branson described the intended date for the first commercial flight as February or March of 2015; by the time of this announcement, a new plastic-based fuel had yet to be ignited in-flight. By September of 2014, the three test flights of the SS2 had only reached an altitude of around 71,000 ft, approximately 13 miles; in order to receive a Federal Aviation Administration licence to carry passengers, the craft needs to complete test missions at full speed and 62-mile height. Following the announcement of further delays, UK newspaper The Sunday Times reported that Branson faced a backlash from those who had booked flights with Virgin Galactic, with the company having received $80 million in fares and deposits. Tom Bower, author of Branson: The Man behind the Mask, told the Sunday Times: "They spent 10 years trying to perfect one engine and failed. They are now trying to use a different engine and get into space in six months. It's just not feasible." BBC science editor David Shukman commented in October 2014, that "[Branson's] enthusiasm and determination [are] undoubted. But his most recent promises of launching the first passenger trip by the end of this year had already started to look unrealistic some months ago.”

VSS Enterprise crash

At 10.51am PST 31 October 2014, the fourth rocket-powered test flight of one of the company's SpaceShipTwo craft, VSS Enterprise, ended in disaster, as it broke apart in midair, with the debris falling into the Mojave desert in California, shortly after being released from the mothership. Initial reports attributed the loss to an as-yet unidentified "in-flight anomaly". The flight was the first test of SpaceShipTwo with new plastic-based fuel, replacing the original—a rubber-based solid fuel that had not met expectations. 39-year-old co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed and 43-year-old pilot Peter Siebold was seriously injured.

Investigation and media comment

Initial investigations found that the engine and propellant tanks were intact, showing that there had not been a fuel explosion. Telemetry data and cockpit video showed that instead, the air braking system appeared to have deployed incorrectly and too early, for unknown reasons, and that the craft had violently broken apart in midair seconds later. 

U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart said on 2 November 2014 that investigators had determined SpaceShipTwo's tail system was supposed to have been released for deployment as the craft was traveling about 1.4 times the speed of sound; instead, the tail section began pivoting when the vehicle was flying at Mach 1. "I'm not stating that this is the cause of the mishap. We have months and months of investigation to determine what the cause was." Asked if pilot error was a possible factor, Hart said: "We are looking at all of these issues to determine what was the root cause of this mishap." He noted that it was also unclear how the tail mechanism began to rotate once it was unlocked, since that maneuver requires a separate pilot command that was never given, and whether the craft's position in the air and its speed somehow enabled the tail section to swing free on its own.

In November 2014, Branson and Virgin Galactic came under criticism for their attempts to distance the company from the disaster by referring to the test pilots as Scaled Composites employees. Virgin Galactic’s official statement on 31 October 2014 said: “Virgin Galactic’s partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo earlier today. [...] Local authorities have confirmed that one of the two Scaled Composites pilots died during the accident”. This was in strong contrast to public communications previously released concerning the group's successful flights, which had routinely presented pilots, craft, and projects within the same organizational structures, as being "Virgin Galactic" flights or activities of "the Galactic team". The BBC's David Shukman commented that: “Even as details emerge of what went wrong, this is clearly a massive setback to a company hoping to pioneer a new industry of space tourism. Confidence is everything and this will not encourage the long list of celebrity and millionaire customers waiting for their first flight".

At a hearing in Washington D.C. on 28 July 2015, and a press release on the same day the NTSB cited inadequate design safeguards, poor pilot training, lack of rigorous FAA oversight and a potentially anxious co-pilot without recent flight experience as important factors in the 2014 crash. They determined that the co-pilot, who died in the accident, prematurely unlocked a movable tail section some ten seconds after SpaceShip Two fired its rocket engine and was breaking the sound barrier, resulting in the craft's breaking apart. But the Board also found that the Scaled Composites unit of Northrop Grumman, which designed and flew the prototype space tourism vehicle, didn’t properly prepare for potential human slip-ups by providing a fail-safe system that could have guarded against such premature deployment. “A single-point human failure has to be anticipated,” board member Robert Sumwalt said. Instead, Scaled Composites “put all their eggs in the basket of the pilots doing it correctly.” 

NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart emphasized that consideration of human factors, which was not emphasized in the design, safety assessment, and operation of SpaceShipTwo’s feather system, is critical to safe manned spaceflight to mitigate the potential consequences of human error. “Manned commercial spaceflight is a new frontier, with many unknown risks and hazards. In such an environment, safety margins around known hazards must be rigorously established and, where possible, expanded. For commercial spaceflight to successfully mature, we must meticulously seek out and mitigate known hazards, as a prerequisite to identifying and mitigating new hazards.” In its submission to the NTSB, Virgin Galactic reports that the second SS2, currently nearing completion, has been modified with an automatic mechanical inhibit device to prevent locking or unlocking of the feather during safety-critical phases. An explicit warning about the dangers of premature unlocking has also been added to the checklist and operating handbook, and a formalized crew resource management (CRM) approach, already used by Virgin for its WK2 operations, is being adopted for SS2. However, despite CRM issues being cited as a likely contributing cause, Virgin confirmed that it would not modify the cockpit display system.

While Virgin has been pursuing the development of a smallsat launch vehicle since 2012, the company began in 2015 to make the smallsat launch business a larger part of Virgin's core business plan, as the Virgin human spaceflight program has experienced multiple delays. This part of the business was spun off into a new company called Virgin Orbit in 2017.

VSS Unity

Following the crash of VSS Enterprise, test flights of the replacement spaceship, VSS Unity, were set to begin after ground tests completed in August 2016. VSS Unity completed its first flight, a successful glide test, in December 2016. The glide lasted ten minutes. By January 2018, seven glide tests had been completed, and on 5 April 2018 it performed a powered test flight, the first since 2014. By July 2018, Unity had gone considerably higher and faster in its testing program than had its predecessor. On Thursday, December 13, VSS Unity reached a height of 82.7 km (51.4 miles) above the earth at speeds close to three times the speed of sound. The two pilots, Mark "Forger" Stucky and Frederick "CJ" Sturckow" earned commercial astronaut wings from the US government for the accomplishment, and brought Virgin Galactic closer to becoming the first private company to take customers to space.

Investors

After a claimed investment by Virgin Group of US$100 million, in 2010 the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, Aabar Investments group, acquired a 31.8% stake in Virgin Galactic for US$280 million, receiving exclusive regional rights to launch tourism and scientific research space flights from the United Arab Emirates capital. In July 2011, Aabar invested a further US$100 million to develop a program to launch small satellites into low Earth orbit, raising their equity share to 37.8%. Virgin announced in June 2014 that they were in talks with Google about the injection of capital to fund both development and operations. The New Mexico government has invested approaching $200m (£121m) in the Spaceport America facility, for which Virgin Galactic is the anchor tenant; other commercial space companies also use the site.

Collaborations

Potential collaboration with NASA

In February 2007, Virgin announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA to explore the potential for collaboration, but, to date, this has produced only a relatively small contract in 2011 of up to $4.5 million for research flights.

OneWeb satellite Internet access provider

Virgin Group in January 2015, announced an investment into the OneWeb satellite constellation providing world Internet access service of WorldVu. Virgin Galactic will take a share of the launch contracts to launch the satellites into their 1200 km orbits. The prospective launches would use the under-design LauncherOne system.

Collaboration with Boom Technology

Virgin Galactic and the Virgin Group are collaborating with Boom Technology in order to create a new supersonic passenger transporter as a successor to the Concorde. This new supersonic plane would fly at Mach 2.2 (similar to Concorde) for a 3-hour trans-Atlantic flight (half of standard), projected to cost $2,500–10,000 per seat (half of Concorde) for a load of 45 passengers (the Concorde held 100). It is anticipated that with the accumulation of knowledge since the design of Concorde, the new plane would be safer and cheaper with better fuel economy, operating costs, and aerodynamics. Boom would collaborate with Virgin's The Spaceship Company for design, engineering, and flight-test support, and manufacturing.

The initial model would be the Boom Technology XB-1 "Baby Boom" Supersonic Demonstrator 1/3-size prototype. It would be capable of trans-Pacific flight, LA-to-Sydney in 6.75 hours, traveling at 2,335 km/h (1,451 mph). XB-1 would be equipped with General Electric J85 engines, Honeywell avionics, with composite structures fabricated by Blue Force using TenCate Advanced Composites carbon fiber products. First flight is scheduled for late 2017. Virgin Galactic has optioned 10 units.

Collaboration with Under Armour

On January 24, 2019, Virgin Galactic announced they've partnered with Under Armour for fabrication of space suits for passengers and pilots of SpaceShipTwo. Under Armour will also create uniforms for Virgin Galactic employees working at Spaceport America. The full range of apparel and footwear is set to be revealed later this year, ahead of Richard Branson's inaugural commercial flight.

Operational aspects

Key personnel

David Mackay, former RAF test pilot, was named chief pilot for Virgin Galactic in 2011 and chief test-pilot. Steve Isakowitz was appointed as Virgin Galactic's president in June 2013. In October 2016, Mike Moses replaced Steve Isakowitz as president; Isakowitz moved to Aerospace Corp. to become President and CEO; Moses was promoted from VP Operations, and was once a NASA flight director and shuttle integration manager.

Personnel

• Chairman: Richard Branson
• CEO: George Whitesides
• CFO: Jon Campagna
• President: Mike Moses

Pilot corps

• Chief Pilot: Dave "Mac" Mackay
• Chief Flight Instructor: Mike "Sooch" Masucci
• VP Safety: Todd "Leif" Ericson
• Test Pilot: Mark "Forger" Stucky
• Pilot: Rick "CJ" Sturckow
• Pilot: Nicola Pecile
• Chief Astronaut Instructor: Beth Moses

Passengers

The Virgin Galactic passenger list is posted on a website not associated with Virgin Galactic. The site lists space tourists who have booked a flight with Virgin Galactic.

Aircraft and spacecraft

Mothership

White Knight Two in the air

 

White Knight Two on the ground

 

The White Knight Two is a special aeroplane built as the mother ship and launch-platform for the spacecraft SpaceShipTwo and the unmanned launch vehicle LauncherOne. The mothership is a large fixed-wing aircraft with two hulls linked together by a central wing. Two aircraft are planned – VMS Eve and VMS Spirit of Steve Fossett.

The LauncherOne system will use a Boeing 747-400 as the mothership. The B747 Cosmic Girl has been acquired for the duties.

Spacecraft

SpaceShip Two

Richard Branson unveiled the rocket plane on December 7, 2009, announcing that, after testing, the plane would carry fare-paying passengers ticketed for short duration journeys just above the atmosphere. Virgin Group would initially launch from a base in New Mexico before extending operations around the globe. Built from lightweight carbon-composite materials and powered by a hybrid rocket motor, SS2 is based on the Ansari X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne concept – a rocket plane that is lifted initially by a carrier aircraft before independent launch. SS1 became the world's first private spaceship with a series of high-altitude flights in 2004.

The programme was delayed after three Scaled Composites employees – Todd Ivens, Eric Blackwell and Charles May – were killed in an accident in Mojave on 26 July 2007, where the detonation of a tank of nitrous oxide destroyed a test stand. They had been observing the test from behind a chain-link fence that offered no protection from the shrapnel and debris when the tank exploded. Three other employees were injured in the blast and the company was fined for breaches of health and safety rules. The cause of the accident has never been made public.

Its successor is twice as large, measuring 18 m (60 ft) in length; whereas SpaceShipOne could carry a single pilot and two passengers, SS2 will have a crew of two and room for six passengers. By August 2013, 640 customers had signed up for a flight, initially at a ticket price of $200,000 per person, but raised to $250,000 in May 2013. Tickets are available from more than 140 "space agents" worldwide. Passengers who have already submitted their deposit include Tom Hanks, Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, scientist and entrepreneur Alan Finkel, Australian science journalist Wilson da Silva and the late Stephen Hawking.

SpaceShipTwo's projected performance

SpaceShipTwo is projected to fly to a height of 110 km, going beyond the defined boundary of space (100 km) and lengthening the experience of weightlessness for its passengers. The spacecraft would reach a top speed of 4000 km/h (2485 mph). On 23 May 2014, Virgin Galactic announced that they had abandoned use of the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) nitrous-oxide-rubber motor for SpaceShipTwo; on 24 July 2014, SNC confirmed that they had also abandoned use of this motor for its Dream Chaser space shuttle. Future testing will see SpaceShipTwo powered by a polyamide grain powered motor. 

In honor of the science-fiction series Star Trek, the first ship is named after the fictional starship Enterprise. To reenter the atmosphere, SpaceShipTwo folds its wings up and then returns them to their original position for an unpowered descent flight back onto the runway. The craft has a very limited cross-range capability, and until other planned spaceports are built worldwide, it has to land in the area where it started. Further spaceports are planned in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, with the intention that the spaceline will have a worldwide availability and commodity in the future.

Overview of the SS2 spacecraft flights

SpaceShipTwo's planned trajectory would achieve a suborbital journey with a short period of weightlessness. Carried to about 16 kilometers, or 52,000 ft, underneath a carrier aircraft, White Knight II, after separation the vehicle would continue to over 100 km (the Kármán line, a common definition of where "space" begins). The time from liftoff of the White Knight booster carrying SpaceShipTwo until the touchdown of the spacecraft after the suborbital flight would be about 2.5 hours. The suborbital flight itself would be only a small fraction of that time, with weightlessness lasting approximately 6 minutes. Passengers will be able to release themselves from their seats during these 6 minutes and float around the cabin. In addition to the suborbital passenger business, Virgin Galactic will market SpaceShipTwo for suborbital space science missions and market White Knight Two for "small satellite" launch services. It had planned to initiate RFPs for the satellite business in early 2010, but flights had not materialized as of 2014. In February 2014, cracks in WhiteKnightTwo, where the spars connect with the fuselage, were discovered during an inspection conducted after Virgin Galactic took possession of the aircraft from builder Scaled Composites.

LauncherOne

LauncherOne is an orbital launch vehicle that was publicly announced by Virgin Galactic in July 2012. It is being designed to launch "smallsat" payloads of 200 kilograms (440 lb) into Earth orbit, with launches projected to begin in 2016. Several commercial customers have already contracted for launches, including GeoOptics, Skybox Imaging, Spaceflight Services, and Planetary Resources. Both Surrey Satellite Technology and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing satellite buses "optimized to the design of LauncherOne."

In October 2012, Virgin announced that LauncherOne could place 200 kg (440 lb) in Sun-synchronous orbit. Virgin plans to market the 200 kg (440 lb) payload delivery to Sun-synchronous orbit for under US$10,000,000 per mission, while the maximum payload for LEO missions is 230 kg (500 lb).

Virgin Galactic has been working on the LauncherOne concept since at least late 2008, and the technical specifications were first described in some detail in late 2009. The LauncherOne configuration is proposed to be an expendable, two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket air-launched from a White Knight Two. This would make it a similar configuration to that used by Orbital Sciences' Pegasus, or a smaller version of the StratoLaunch. 

In 2015, Virgin Galactic established a 150,000-sq.ft. research, development and manufacturing center for LauncherOne at the Long Beach Airport. The company reported in March 2015 that they are on schedule to begin test flights of LauncherOne with its Newton 3 engine by the end of 2016. On 25 June 2015, the company signed a contract with OneWeb Ltd. for 39 satellite launches for its satellite constellation with an option for an additional 100 launches.

Engines

LauncherOne will be a two-stage air-launched vehicle using Newton engines, RP-1/LOX liquid rocket engines. The second stage will be powered by NewtonOne, a 16 kilonewtons (3,500 lbf) thrust engine. It was originally intended that the first stage will be powered by a scaled-up design of the same basic technology as NewtonOne, called NewtonTwo, with 211 kilonewtons (47,500 lbf) of thrust. Both engines have been designed, and as of January 2014 first articles have been built. NewtonOne was tested up to a full-duration burn of five minutes. NewtonTwo made several short-duration firings by early 2014.

NewtonThree is a 260–335-kilonewton (58,000–75,000 lbf)-thrust engine, and has only recently begun hot-fire tests as of March 2015. More recent reports suggest that a NewtonThree will power the first stage of LauncherOne.

2015 redesign: new engines, larger payloads, new carrier aircraft

LauncherOne will be launched from this former Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747, named Cosmic Girl.

 

News reports in September 2015 indicate that the higher payload is to be achieved by longer fuel tanks and the NewtonThree engine but this will mean that White Knight Two will no longer be able to lift it to launch altitude. The rocket will be carried to launch altitude by a 747. The revised LauncherOne will utilize both the Newton 3 and Newton 4 rocket engines.

In December 2015, Virgin announced a change to the carrier plane for LauncherOne, as well as a substantially-larger design point for the rocket itself. The carrier aircraft will now be a Boeing 747, which will in turn allow a larger LauncherOne to carry heavier payloads than previously planned. The modification work on the particular 747 that Virgin has purchased is expected to be completed in 2016, to be followed by Orbital test launches of the rocket in 2017.

Fleet

SpaceShipTwo (spaceships)

• VSS Enterprise (2010–2014) †
• VSS Unity (2016–present)
• VSS 3 (under construction)
• VSS 4 (under construction)

WhiteKnightTwo (motherships)

• VMS Eve (2008–present )

Boeing 747 (motherships)

• Cosmic Girl (2015–present )

Commercial spaceflight locations

In 2008 it was announced that test launches for its fleet of two White Knight Two mother ships and five or more SpaceShipTwo tourist suborbital spacecraft would take place from the Mojave Spaceport, where Scaled Composites was constructing the spacecraft. An international architectural competition for the design of Virgin Galactic's operating base, Spaceport America in New Mexico, saw the contract awarded to URS and Foster + Partners architects. In the same year Virgin Galactic announced that it would eventually operate in Europe out of Spaceport Sweden or even from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland.

While the original plan called for flight operations to transfer from the California desert to the new spaceport upon completion of the spaceport, Virgin Galactic has yet to complete the development and test program of SpaceShipTwo. In October 2010, the 3,000 m (10,000 ft) runway at Spaceport America was opened, with SpaceShipTwo "VSS Enterprise" shipped to the site carried underneath the fuselage of Virgin Galactic's Mother Ship Eve.

Competition

Virgin Galactic is not the only corporation pursuing suborbital spacecraft for tourism. Blue Origin is developing suborbital flights with its New Shepard spacecraft. Although more secretive about its plans, Jeff Bezos has said the company is developing a spacecraft that would take off and land vertically and carry three or more astronauts to the edge of space. New Shepard has flown above the Karman line, landed and been reflown to above the Karman line again.

On 16 September 2014, SpaceX and Boeing were awarded contracts as part of NASA's CCtCap program to develop their Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, respectively. Both are capsule designs to bring crew to orbit, a different commercial market than that addressed by Virgin Galactic.

Now-defunct XCOR Aerospace had also worked on rocket-powered aircraft during many of the years that Virgin Galactic had; XCOR's Lynx suborbital vehicle was under development for more than a decade, and its predecessor, the XCOR EZ-Rocket did actually take flight, but the company closed its doors in 2017.

Criticism

There have been a series of delays to the SS2 flight test vehicle becoming operational, amidst repeated assurances from Virgin Galactic marketing that operational flights were only a year or two out. The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2014 that there has been "tension between Mr. Branson’s upbeat projections and the persistent hurdles that challenged the company’s hundreds of technical experts." The company has responded that "the company and its contractors 'have internal milestones, such as schedule estimates and goals, but the companies are driven by safety and the completion of the flight test program before moving into commercial service.' Virgin Galactic’s schedules have always been consistent with internal schedules of its contractors and changes have 'never impacted flight safety'."

United Launch Alliance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Payload fairing and Centaur upper stage of an Atlas V 411 at Vandenberg AFB
Type	Private
Industry	Aerospace
Founded	December 1, 2006
Headquarters	Centennial, Colorado, U.S.
Key people	Tory Bruno (CEO)
Products	Atlas V, Delta IV
Number of employees	2,500
Website	ulalaunch.com

United Launch Alliance (ULA) is a provider of spacecraft launch services to the United States government. It was formed as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security in December 2006 by combining the teams at the two companies. U.S. government launch customers include the Department of Defense and NASA, as well as other organizations. With ULA, Lockheed and Boeing held a monopoly on military launches for more than a decade until the US Air Force awarded a GPS satellite contract to SpaceX in 2016.

ULA provides launch services using two expendable launch systems – Delta IV and Atlas V. The Atlas and Delta launch system families have been used for more than 50 years to carry a variety of payloads including weather, telecommunications and national security satellites, as well as deep space and interplanetary exploration missions in support of scientific research. ULA also provides launch services for non-government satellites: Lockheed Martin retains the rights to market Atlas commercially.

Beginning in October 2014, ULA announced that they intended to undertake a substantial restructuring of the company, its products and processes, in the coming years in order to decrease launch costs. ULA is planning on building a new rocket that will be a successor to the Atlas V, using a new rocket engine on the first stage. In April 2015, they unveiled the new vehicle as the Vulcan, with the first flight of a new first stage planned for no earlier than 2020.

History

ULA's headquarters building in Centennial, Colorado

Formation of the joint venture

Boeing and Lockheed Martin announced their intent to form the United Launch Alliance joint venture on May 2, 2005. ULA merged the production and operation of the government space launch services of the two companies into one central plant in Decatur, Alabama, and merged all engineering into another central facility in Littleton, Colorado. Marketing and sales responsibilities for the Delta and Atlas launch vehicles was retained by the parent companies.

Boeing Integrated Defense Systems Delta IV and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Atlas V are both launchers developed for the late-1990s US government Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program intended to provide the government with assured access to space. 

ULA had a peak of seven space launch facilities during 2005–2011. It announced a consolidation to five in 2008 with the intent to close two of its three Delta II pads, and closed the two-pad launch complex at Cape Canaveral after its final Delta II launch in 2011.

SpaceX challenged the United States antitrust law legality of the launch services monopoly on October 23, 2005, creating a competition with reusable launch systems. The FTC gave their anti-trust clearance on October 3, 2006.

Two years following company formation from units of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, ULA announced it would lay off 350 workers in early 2009, reducing from a company-wide employment of 4200 employees in 2008. In the event, ULA had approximately 3900 employees by August 2009.

In November 2010, United Launch Alliance was selected by NASA for consideration for potential contract awards for heavy lift launch vehicle system concepts, and propulsion technologies.

It was announced in August 2014 that Michael Gass, ULA CEO since ULA was founded in 2006, would step down immediately and that he would be replaced by Tory Bruno, effective immediately.

In September 2014, it was announced that the firm had won a contract from the United States Air Force for US$938 million for additional work on military rocket launch services related to its existing contracts with the US Air Force.

ULA announced in February 2015 that they are considering undertaking domestic production of the Russian RD-180 engine at the Decatur, Alabama rocket stage manufacturing facility. The US-manufactured engines would be used only for government civil (NASA) or commercial launches, and would not be used for US military launches.

Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc submitted a $2 billion offer to purchase the joint venture on September 8, 2015. According to industry officials, the bid, if successful, would likely create a unified leadership for the company. On September 16, 2015, spokesperson Todd Blecher for joint owner Boeing commented that Aerojet Rocketdyne's bid was never "seriously entertained" and rejected the offer.

Company restructuring after 2014

In October 2014, ULA announced a major restructuring of processes and workforce in order to decrease launch costs by half. One of the reasons given for the restructuring and new cost reduction goals was competition from SpaceX. ULA intends to have preliminary design ideas in place for a blending of the Atlas V and Delta IV technology by the end of 2014, to build a successor that will allow them to cut launch costs in half. The restructuring is intended to facilitate ULA's shift into providing widespread access to space, and growing the customer base to include significant commercial customers in addition to the principally US government customers of ULA's first decade. CEO Tory Bruno stated in November 2014 that he intends to transform the company and reorganize it "to make it more agile, and establish new business models to adapt to the new environment. These changes will lead to improvements in how ULA interacts with its customers, both governmental and commercial, shorter launch cycles, and launch costs cut in half again." ULA intends to shrink the number of company launch pads from six in 2008 and five in 2015 to only two by 2021 as they ramp down the legacy Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles.

In May 2015, ULA stated that it would go out of business unless it won commercial and civil satellite launch orders to offset an expected slump in U.S. military and spy launches. The same month, ULA announced it would decrease its executive ranks by 30 percent in December 2015, with the layoff of 12 executives. The management layoffs are the "beginning of a major reorganization and redesign" as ULA endeavours to "slash costs and hunt out new customers to ensure continued growth despite the rise of SpaceX".

In January 2018, ULA took over marketing and sales responsibilities for Atlas V launches. Previously, since the formation of ULA in 2006, ULA had handled the operational side of the launch services but Boeing continued to market Delta launch services and Lockheed Martin continued to market Atlas launch services. ULA has been the major launch service provider to the US "military market since its creation in 2006 as a 50-50 joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing". "ULA no longer has a monopoly in national security space launches and near-term demand for such launches is expected to soften" according to the Lexington Institute.

The final launch of the Delta II was undertaken by the company on 15 September 2018, after which the rocket was retired.

Headquarters and manufacturing

ULA is headquartered in Centennial, Colorado, with program management, rocket design and engineering centers, test and mission support functions. ULA's largest factory is 1.6 million square feet and located in Decatur, Alabama. Decatur is very close to Huntsville, which is known as "Rocket City" because of its proximity to Redstone Arsenal, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and many aerospace companies. A factory in Harlingen, Texas, fabricates and assembles components for the Atlas V rocket. In 2015, the company announced the opening of an engineering and propulsion test center in Pueblo, Colorado.

Launch facilities

CEO Tory Bruno (left), Robert M. Lightfoot Jr., Acting Administrator of NASA (middle), and Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States (right), touring ULA's Horizontal Integration Facility at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in February 2018

 

The company operates orbital launch sites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California. In Florida, ULA has used Launch Complex 41 for Atlas V launches since its maiden flight in August 2002, and Launch Complex 37 for Delta IV launches since the rocket's maiden flight in November 2002. The company has three launch pads at Vandenberg, as of April 2017. These include Launch Complex 2 for Delta II launches, Launch Complex 3 for Atlas launches, and Launch Complex 6 for Delta IV and Delta IV Heavy launches. Space Launch Complex 2 is no longer in active use by ULA, since the retirement of the Delta II in September, 2018.

Launches from Cape Canaveral typically head east so satellites can get extra momentum from the rotation of the Earth as they head to other planets or an orbit over the equator. Vandenberg Air Force Base is the primary U.S. launch site to send satellites into polar orbits. Commercial and military spacecraft like imaging and weather satellites need to launch southward on a path to reach such an orbit to cover the entire globe from pole-to-pole. However, ULA's Atlas V rocket launched NASA's InSight mission to Mars from the West Coast in 2018, the first interplanetary mission ever to do so.

ULA has announced plans to reduce the number of launch pads in use from five in 2015 to only two by the early 2020s, as part of the company's transition from the Atlas V and Delta IV launch vehicles to the Vulcan Centaur.

Launch vehicles

ULA operates the Atlas V, Delta IV, and Delta IV Heavy launch vehicles since 2006, all three have launched with a 100% success rate. The Atlas V and Delta IV rockets were respectively developed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing as part of the EELV program, and first launched in 2002, while the Delta II was previously built and launched by Boeing. The final Delta II mission occurred in 2018, and ULA plans to phase out the single-stick Delta IV variants by 2019. Delta IV Heavy rockets will keep flying to meet customer demand for launching heavy payloads.

In 2014, ULA began development of the Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle, which is designed to meet medium and heavy lift requirements, and will replace both Atlas V and Delta IV. Development of Vulcan began in an effort to lower costs and end reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines used on the first stage of Atlas V. Vulcan will use the RL10 to power the Centaur V upper stage and a pair of BE-4 engines for its main stage. The Vulcan inaugural flight is scheduled for mid 2020.

The company's ten-year product development timeline also includes a new upper stage called Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES), which is planned to replace Centaur V on Vulcan no earlier than 2023.

United Launch Alliance fleet: left to right, Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Atlas V 400-series, Atlas V 500-series

Launches

Commercial and international launches aboard Atlas V and Delta rockets are managed by Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services and Boeing Launch Services, respectively. 

The first launch conducted by ULA was of a Delta II, from Vandenberg Air Force Base on December 14, 2006. The rocket carried the USA 193 satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. This satellite failed shortly after launch and was intentionally destroyed on February 21, 2008 by an SM-3 missile fired from the Ticonderoga class cruiser USS Lake Erie.

On June 15, 2007, the engine in the Centaur upper stage of a ULA-launched Atlas V shut down early, leaving its payload – a pair of NRO L-30 ocean surveillance satellites – in a lower than intended orbit. Nonetheless, the mission was declared a success by the customer.

On October 2, 2015 ULA successfully completed its 100th mission with the launch of Mexsat-2 (also known as Morelos III) from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas V.

A launch of the Atlas V rocket on March 22, 2016 had a minor first-stage anomaly that led to shutdown of the first-stage engine approximately five seconds before anticipated. The anomaly forced the Centaur upper stage of the rocket to fire for approximately one minute longer than planned, using reserved fuel margin. The preplanned deorbit burn successfully deorbited the stage, but not precisely within the designated location. The anomaly marks the first Atlas V anomaly in over eight years to be publicly acknowledged by ULA.

The company launched the final Delta II rocket, carrying ICESat-2 from Vandenberg Air Force Base SLC-2 on 15 September 2018. This marks the last launch of a Delta family rocket based on the original Thor ICBM.

Controversy

ULA claimed Launch Service Costs under the Block Buy (marketing publication)

 

With the introduction of competition from lower-cost launch providers and the increasing costs of ULA launches year-over-year, increased attention has been paid to the amounts ULA has received for US government launch contracts, and for its annual government funding of $1 billion for launch capability and readiness. In particular, an uncontested US Air Force block-buy of 36 rocket cores for up to 28 launches, valued at $11 billion, awarded in Dec 2013, drew protest from competitor SpaceX. SpaceX has claimed the cost of ULA's launches are approximately $460 million each, and has proposed a price of $90 million to provide similar launches. In response, former ULA CEO Michael Gass claimed an average launch price of $225 million, with future launches as low as $100 million.

ULA released contract values to the public and CEO Tory Bruno testified before Congress in March 2015 that whilst ULA receives government subsidies "to conduct national security launches" the same is true of SpaceX who receive funding "to develop new capabilities and the use of low- or no-cost leases of previously developed launch infrastructure".

A political controversy arose in March 2016 following public remarks by ULA VP of Engineering, Brett Tobey, that included comments that were "resentful of SpaceX" and dismissive of one of the two competitors (Aerojet Rocketdyne) for the new engine that will power the Vulcan launch vehicle currently under development. Tobey resigned on March 16, while ULA CEO Tory Bruno disavowed the remarks. Senator John McCain asked the Defense Department to investigate the comments that implied the DoD may have shown "favoritism to a major defense contractor or that efforts have been made to silence members of Congress" and the Secretary of Defense has requested the Inspector General to open an investigation of the controversy.

In June 2017 Ars Technica analyzed a US Air Force budget and concluded that if ULA would be selected for all the Air Force launches in year 2020 and 2021, the cost per launch would be on the order of $420 million. ULA's CEO Tory Bruno described the analysis as "misleading"; in July the company was awarded $191 million single-launch contract to launch the STP-3 mission aboard the heavy-lift Atlas V 551.