United Launch Alliance Brand Guidelines: Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s 2006 Launch Venture

Atlas and Delta under one roof.

United Launch Alliance was created by two companies that had spent years competing for the same work. On 2 May 2005, Boeing and Lockheed Martin announced that they would put their government launch businesses into a 50/50 joint venture, and the company was formed in December 2006, English Wikipedia says, citing reporting from the time. The two had flown the Atlas and Delta rockets chosen for the US Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle programme; Wikipedia records that both said competition had made launches unprofitable, and that the Federal Trade Commission cleared the merger.

The new company did not design its rockets from scratch. It inherited the Atlas V from Lockheed Martin and the Delta family — Delta II and Delta IV — from Boeing. Under its first chief executive, Michael Gass, production was gathered at one plant in Decatur, Alabama, and engineering was moved to the Denver area, Wikipedia says. Its first launch was a Delta II from Vandenberg in December 2006 for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The name says what the company does, and its own website repeats it as an abbreviation, ULA. The company describes itself as harnessing “the potential of space for humanity” and lists its mission as “Save Lives, Explore the Universe, Connect the World.” Its main customers have been the US Department of Defense and NASA, with commercial work alongside, Wikipedia says.

Atlas, Delta and Vulcan.

For most of its life ULA flew rockets that were already old designs. The Delta II, first built by McDonnell Douglas, made its last flight on 15 September 2018, carrying NASA’s ICESat-2. The last Delta IV Medium flew in August 2019. The Delta IV Heavy, the largest of the family, made its final launch on 9 April 2024 from Cape Canaveral, for the National Reconnaissance Office, which retired the Delta line, Wikipedia records.

The Atlas V carried NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars in 2020 and Boeing’s Starliner capsule, including its first crewed flight in June 2024. In 2018 an Atlas V launched NASA’s InSight lander from California, which Wikipedia calls the first interplanetary probe to leave from the US West Coast, and in October 2023 one carried the first two prototype satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper network. Its first stage uses the Russian-built RD-180 engine, and a 2016 US law barred the military from buying launches on that engine after 2022. Wikipedia says the Atlas V is being retired, with its remaining flights booked and no new orders taken, and counted 106 Atlas V missions by January 2026.

The replacement is Vulcan Centaur, begun in 2014. Its first stage uses two BE-4 engines made by Blue Origin, and its upper stage, the Centaur V, uses two RL10 engines from Aerojet Rocketdyne, with up to six solid boosters from Northrop Grumman. Vulcan first flew on 8 January 2024, sending Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander towards the Moon. On its second flight, on 4 October 2024, one solid booster suffered an anomaly and partial loss of thrust; Wikipedia records that the rocket still reached orbit and that the two flights completed its certification for national security launches.

ULA also built the upper stage for the first flights of NASA’s Space Launch System, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, based on the Delta IV’s second stage.

Design and documentation.

Launch companies sell something few customers ever see up close, so their public image is built almost entirely from pictures and broadcasts. The familiar set is a rocket standing on its pad at dawn or under floodlights, the long-exposure streak of an ascent across a night sky, and the plume photographed from miles down the coast. Engine test stands supply a second genre: a horizontal or downward jet of fire, usually shot from a safe distance, which stands in for years of engineering that is otherwise invisible.

Factories are shown the other way round. Clean white halls, rows of tank sections, workers in coveralls and cleanroom suits suggest order and repetition rather than drama. Many launches are also accompanied by a mission patch, a small embroidered emblem in the tradition of NASA crew patches, which turns a single flight into something that can be collected and worn.

The countdown livestream has become a format in its own right, with hosts, telemetry overlays and replays of the booster or upper stage. Not every company has worked this way: in April 2016 Inverse described one maker that gave a day’s notice of its flights and published an edited highlights video afterwards, with no live webcast. Coverage now often runs alongside posts from executives on social media, which journalists quote in their reports.

The industry also meets in person. The Space Symposium in Colorado Springs and the International Astronautical Congress, which moves to a different host city each year, are where companies unveil models, sign agreements and show their identities on stands and banners. This guide looks at what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it, what it has flown, and what it says about itself.

Still a joint venture.

ULA is still owned equally by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. In December 2025 its board was led by two chairs, Robert Lightfoot for Lockheed Martin and Kay Sears for Boeing, the company’s statement shows. The venture has repeatedly been reported as for sale: Breaking Defense wrote in December 2025 that ULA had “reportedly been up for sale for several years” without finding a buyer.

Leadership has changed twice in a year. Tory Bruno, chief executive since August 2014, resigned on 22 December 2025 “to pursue another opportunity,” the board said, and Boeing veteran John Elbon became interim chief executive; Washington Technology later reported that Bruno had left for a senior role at Blue Origin, the supplier of Vulcan’s engines. On 17 August 2026 ULA named Mark Peller, its chief operating officer, as president and chief executive. The company says he had been with ULA since its formation in 2006 and led Vulcan’s development.

The company now gives Centennial, Colorado, near Denver, as its headquarters, where it says program management, engineering, test and mission support are based. Its rockets are made at Decatur, Alabama, in a factory Wikipedia gives as 1.6 million square feet; it opened an engineering and propulsion test centre in Pueblo, Colorado, in 2015, and ran a parts plant in Harlingen, Texas, until 2024. It launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg in California; it says it has about 2,700 employees. Since 2006 it has cut its active launch pads from seven to two, Wikipedia says. Amazon chose ULA in 2022 for launches of its Kuiper satellite constellation, booking nine on Atlas V and 38 on Vulcan, Wikipedia records.

For a design guide, United Launch Alliance shows how a merged company can carry two older rocket names before building a new one of its own. Compare Blue Origin, which supplies Vulcan’s main engines, and Boeing, one of its two owners. For this guide we use navy, white and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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