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“There will be
corrective action," Tory Bruno, chief executive of the joint
venture by Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co,told Reuters in an
interview at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
“I’m still confident that we’re going to get all the missions
off within a year, but there’s going to be a little shuffling
around,” Bruno said.
ULA currently holds a monopoly on launching U.S. military and
national security payloads.
The company’s next launch of a military communications
satellite, MUOS-5, originally slated for May 5, has been delayed
indefinitely, pending resolution of a problem that shut down an
Atlas rocket first-stage engine 5.5 seconds early during its
last flight on March 22, ULA said.
The rocket’s second stage compensated for the shortfall,
successfully delivering an Orbital ATK cargo ship into orbit for
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The capsule
later reached the International Space Station without incident.
ULA launched an immediate investigation into the premature
engine shutdown. “Anytime anything happens on a rocket that’s
not expected, we grind it to dust,” Bruno said.
The problem involves the system that delivers kerosene fuel to
the rocket’s Russian-made RD-180 first-stage engine. Bruno said
he expects to know within the next few days which components are
suspect.
Engineers have not found anything in the processing of the
rocket for that launch on March 22 that was different from any
previously flown, Bruno added.
“We have a very good idea (of what the problem is), but we’re
not quite done isolating it,” Bruno said. "I think in the next
few days we should be able to say which components ... we’re
actually focused on."
(Reporting By Irene Klotz; Editing by Chris Reese)
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