Longtime United Launch Alliance President and CEO Tory Bruno jumped ship right before Christmas last year, moving on to work with Blue Origin.
Read more Florida GOP candidates for governor make closing pitch before primary
After eight months of interim leadership, ULA has named Mark Peller as his replacement. ULA was founded in 2006 as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
“This is an exciting time in the launch industry where there is unprecedented demand for access to space,” said Robert Lightfoot, president of Lockheed Martin Space and ULA board chair. “We see a strong future with continued growth for ULA and have tremendous confidence in Mark’s ability to lead this company.”
Peller is taking over for John Elbon, who ran ULA after Bruno’s departure, but will be retiring at the end of the year after a 45-year career in the aerospace industry.
Peller had been the company’s chief operating officer and responsible for its Atlas V and Vulcan launch programs. He has led Vulcan development since its inception.
But the Vulcan program has been a thorn in ULA’s plans to ramp up launches. The successor rocket to ULA’s Atlas V and now-retired Delta IV class of rockets, it was originally targeting a debut as early as 2019.
But it didn’t launch its first mission until 2024 after facing a series of delays due to COVID, the development of brand new engines from supplier Blue Origin and an explosion on a test pad.
It managed two launches that year, but the second saw a problem with one of its solid rocket boosters supplied by Northrop Grumman that delayed its certification for national security launches until spring 2025. That led to one successful launch for the Space Force in 2025, and 2026 was looking to be the year Vulcan got up to pace.
Instead, in a flight that saw an eerily similar issue with one of its solid rocket boosters that it suffered on its second flight, Vulcan had a burn-through that destroyed one of the booster nozzles.
That prompted the Space Force to announce it would not fly again on Vulcan until it fixed the booster problem.
Read more UCF freshman receiver Tyren Hornes turning heads in preseason camp
Then Blue Origin, which supplies ULA with the first-stage booster’s two BE-4 engines, had its own explosive issue during a hot fire test on their pad at Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36. Investigation into that incident pointed toward a valve on the BE-4 engines prompting the need to make fixes on all BE-4 engines.
That includes all of the Vulcan rockets waiting for launch at the Cape as well as those in production at ULA’s manufacturing facilities in Huntsville, Alabama.
ULA has stated that it still intends to fly Vulcan again before the end of the year, though.
Meanwhile, ULA filled the launch manifest with its few remaining Atlas V rockets, all for missions to proliferate the Amazon LEO satellite constellation. Only six Atlas V rockets remain, but those are all reserved for flights of Boeing’s Starliner, which is also working through issues. NASA officials have said that an opportunity for Starliner still exists to fly before the end of the year.
For now, nothing from ULA can fly, and it has a backlog of more than 70 missions including more than two dozen for the Department of Defense.
Peller, who has been with ULA since it was founded, now has to steer ULA back to achieving its goals of hitting two launches a month from its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41.
He began his career at Rockwell International in 1990 as a propulsion engineer supporting NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. He then joined Boeing in 1996 when it acquired portions of Rockwell. During his time with Boeing, eh worked on the Delta program beginning in 1997 including the initial launches of Delta IV. When ULA formed, he was the chief engineer for both Delta II and Delta IV.
“Over my nearly two decades with ULA, it is the important work we do for our customers that inspires me every day,” Peller said. “ULA has a tremendous history of launching some of the nation’s most important national security and exploration missions and the future is limitless with the new capabilities and performance of our Vulcan rocket.”
Read more Disney updates: Villains Land, Tropical Americas, Disco Yeti, more