ULA’s chief executive has confirmed that ULA will receive two new rocket engines by next summer from Blue Origin, a giant company by the famous Jeff Bezos.
Boeing Co and Lockheed Martin Corp have joined hands for a joint rocket venture under the name ULA or the United Launch Alliance and is said to be the Pentagon’s top launch contractor for national security satellites. Although ULA said earlier that the company was about to receive these rocket engines in 2020, the delivery got delayed.
Tory Bruno, the Chief Executive of ULA, assured that the reusable BE-4 engines that the Blue Origin will supply will be installed in Vulcan, a next-generation rocket that has won a slate of key US defence missions through 2027.
This will be done to ensure that the rocket continues to be on track until the Lunar lander’s launch dubbed Peregrine by the end of 2021. The chief executive, Bruno, on the 17th of December also added with an air of positivity that they expect “that Peregrine will go to space in the 4th quarter of 2021,”.
ULA picked Blue Origin’s BE-4 in 2018 to power Vulcan, a two-stage heavy-lift rocket that will succeed ULA’s Atlas 5 workhorse.
Blue Origin’s BE-4 was picked up by ULA back in 2018 to charge up the next-generation two-stage heavy-lift rocket, Vulcan which is expected to succeed ULA’s Atlas 5 workhorse.
Blue Origin failed to deliver BE-4 because the part of a rocket engine that injects flammable propellants during ignition with forces of 80,000 horsepower was diagnosed with some serious issues.
Bruno has confirmed that they are not much bothered about the glitch and that they “are very confident in the final configuration”.