ULA And NASA

The United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has entered into an agreement with NASA to work with the space agency to determine how quickly the Atlas 5 rocket can be upgraded to launch spacecraft carrying humans.

So far, the Atlas 5 has a 100% performance record since 2002 launching satellites.


This effort would aim at getting American astronauts flying aboard American commercial spacecraft, launched by the Atlas 5, as soon as possible. Speculation is that the Atlas 5 could be man-rated in three or four years. If successful, the effort could provide competition to both the Russian Soyuz and SpaceX's Falcon 9/Dragon stack, thus, hopefully, reducing the cost of human spaceflight and bringing in more competitors.