Every Cosmic Herald story on United Launch Alliance — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
NASA and Boeing outlined a new Starliner plan: an uncrewed engineering flight as soon as December, Woody Hoburg commanding a crewed flight by 2028, Vulcan certification for later flights as Atlas V retires, and about $359 million more for upgrades and certification.
Read the story →ULA's Vulcan rocket flew its debut national-security mission on August 12, 2026, delivering the Air Force's experimental NTS-3 satellite toward geosynchronous orbit to test jam-resistant GPS backup technology.
Blue Origin says a single malfunctioning main oxygen valve on a BE-4 engine destroyed New Glenn and 48 Amazon Leo satellites in May, with fixed hardware due late August and flights targeted before year's end.
Space Systems Command awarded SpaceX two task orders worth $1.6 billion for 18 Falcon 9 launches by end of 2027, carrying satellites meant to track airborne threats and feed targeting data to U.S. forces in near-real time.
The Space Force tripled its NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 ceiling to $17 billion across seven launch providers on July 17, 2026 — but a GAO report showing commercial launches at federal ranges have more than quadrupled since 2021 suggests the real bottleneck isn't rockets, it's the ground beneath them.
Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Neutron, Ariane 6, and six more launch vehicles compared on payload, cost per launch, and reusability, including China's Long March 10B, which on July 10 became just the third rocket in history to catch its own booster.
Space Systems Command has admitted Relativity Space and Impulse Space to the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 contract pool, giving the two commercial newcomers a shot at up to $5.6 billion in military launch task orders.
Space Systems Command admitted Impulse Space and Relativity's Relativity Federal to NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 on July 7, growing the qualified-provider pool to seven and handing each a $5 million task order.
United Launch Alliance closed out the Atlas V 551's 20-year career hauling 29 more Amazon Leo satellites to orbit, just weeks before Amazon's FCC deadline to deploy half its broadband constellation.
United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur has completed its certification flights and is entering regular commercial service. The rocket is designed to handle everything ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV carried — and it's arriving at a moment when the launch market is more competitive than it has ever been.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket reached orbit on its first attempt — a significant achievement for a company that spent years being compared unfavorably to SpaceX. But a single successful launch is a beginning, not a business. What comes next will define whether New Glenn becomes a serious player.
ULA's Vulcan Centaur was certified to launch the Pentagon's most sensitive satellites — and then a solid rocket booster misbehaved on two flights in a row. The Space Force has now paused Vulcan missions until the problem is understood.
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