Plus: Tory Bruno leaves United Launch Alliance
| By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Tory Bruno resigns as the head of United Launch Alliance, CACI buys a space technology company for $2.4 billion and more details about a Japanese H3 launch failure.
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| | | | | | Top Stories
In an unexpected move, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno has resigned. The company, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture, announced Monday that Bruno had stepped down for another, unnamed opportunity. Neither the company nor Bruno commented further on his resignation, which took many in the industry by surprise. Bruno became chief executive of ULA in 2014 after serving as president of Lockheed Martin Strategic and Missile Defense Systems. He joined the company as it was losing its monopoly in national security launch to SpaceX and was facing the potential loss of access to the RD-180 engine used by the Atlas 5. Soon after joining the company, he selected Blue Origin's BE-4 engine to power a new launch vehicle, later called Vulcan, to replace both the Atlas 5 and Delta 4. Vulcan successfully made its debut nearly two years ago, but ULA has been slow to ramp up launches of the new vehicle. [SpaceNews]
CACI International is acquiring space technology company ARKA Group from private equity firm Blackstone Tactical Opportunities for $2.4 billion. The companies announced Monday the all-cash deal, one that is expected to close in the third quarter of CACI's 2026 fiscal year. ARKA develops software for processing and analyzing data from space-based sensors, including radar and remote sensing systems, as well as space-qualified optical systems and payloads. CACI said the deal aligns with its strategy to expand in the national security space sector. CACI's space-related work spans across hardware, software and services, including production of optical terminals for inter-satellite links. [SpaceNews]
The first flight of the Long March 12A successfully reached orbit, but the rocket's booster was not able to land. The Long March 12A rocket lifted off at 9 p.m. Eastern Monday from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone at the Jiuquan spaceport. Chinese officials said that the rocket's upper stage reached orbit, but acknowledged the booster did not perform a landing as planned on a pad 250 kilometers downrange from the launch site. Imagery shared on social media suggested that the landing was unsuccessful, potentially attempting to land around two kilometers from the pad. The launch came nearly three weeks after Chinese company Landspace attempted a landing on the first flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket. The first stage crashed near its landing pad on that flight, but the upper stage did reach orbit. [SpaceNews]
The first launch of a small South Korean rocket failed shortly after liftoff Monday. Innospace's first Hanbit-Nano rocket lifted off at 8:13 p.m. Eastern from the Alcântara launch center in Brazil. However, the rocket malfunctioned about 30 seconds after liftoff, crashing into a designated safety zone near the pad and exploding. Innospace released few details about the failure. The small rocket was carrying eight smallsats and hosted payloads from customers in Brazil, India and Korea. Shares in Innospace fell sharply on a Korean stock exchange Tuesday. [Korea Times]
| | | | | | Other News
The investigation into a failed H3 launch Sunday is focusing on the rocket's payload fairing. Investigators with the Japanese space agency JAXA said there was a larger impact than usual on the rocket when its payload fairing separated. That coincided with a drop in pressure in the liquid hydrogen tank in the rocket's upper stage, which caused lower thrust from the upper stage's engine. The engine failed to restart on a planned second burn, leaving the stage and its navigation satellite payload in a low orbit that decayed hours after launch. [Asahi Shimbun]
A failed Starship launch in January caused more danger to air traffic than first thought. On that launch, the Starship upper stage broke up during ascent, with debris falling along a corridor in the Caribbean. FAA documents found that three aircraft, including two commercial jetliners, had to go through a no-fly zone established to avoid the falling debris because of fuel emergencies. Other aircraft rerouted around the zone, but that put strain on air traffic controllers, with two planes flying too close to each other as a result. The FAA documents also claimed that SpaceX didn't immediately inform the FAA about the launch failure. SpaceX, in a social media post, said the article was filled with "misleading information from detractors with ulterior motives" and reiterated its commitment to public safety. [Wall Street Journal]
The federal government is in talks to swap land with SpaceX near the company's Starbase site. Under the proposed deal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would transfer 775 acres of land currently part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge to SpaceX, while SpaceX would hand over 692 acres of land it owns in other locations in the region, including near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge well to the north of Starbase. The state of Texas agreed last year to a smaller land swap with SpaceX involving a state park near Starbase, but SpaceX backed out of the agreement for reasons it did not disclose. [New York Times]
Redwire won a contract to provide docking mechanisms for The Exploration Company's cargo vehicles. The "eight-figure" contract, announced last week, covers the delivery of two International Berthing and Docking Mechanisms built by Redwire's European subsidiary to The Exploration Company, which will use them on its Nyx vehicles. The mechanism will allow Nyx to dock with the International Space Station on a demonstration flight planned for as soon as 2028. [European Spaceflight]
Note: FIRST UP will not publish Wednesday through Friday of this week. We will be back on Monday, Dec. 29. Happy Holidays!
| | | | | FROM SPACENEWS |  | | Speed, risk, and the future of national security space: In this episode of Space Minds, host Mike Gruss moderates a panel discussion at the Spacepower conference on how commercial space capabilities are reshaping national security, civil space and military decision-making with Luke Fischer, CEO and co-founder of SkyFi, Bob Pavelko, executive director of national security space programs for Intuitive Machines, and Bradley Cheetham, CEO and co-founder of Advanced Space. Watch or listen now. | | | | | | NASA's New Space Technology Direction
| "That certainly sounds like the right direction. I mean, almost every good space sci-fi movie I've seen incorporated both AI and holographs."
| | – NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, responding to a NASA employee question at a town hall meeting Friday if NASA would make more use of artificial intelligence and holography technologies.
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