When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
After nearly 12 years leading the United Launch Alliance (ULA), its chief Tory Bruno is stepping down from the U.S. rocket launch provider to pursue "another opportunity," the company announced this week.
What's that new opportunity? We're not sure yet, but it's guaranteed to be "Something interesting," Bruno wrote on social media after the Dec. 22 announcement.
Bruno took the reigns as ULA president and CEO in August 2014, overseeing the company, a collaboration between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as it launched its Atlas V rockets and retired its Delta rocket family. He oversaw the development of new booster, the Vulcan Centaur rocket, which ULA plans to use as a workhorse vehicle.
During Bruno's term, ULA fought to contend with launch competitor SpaceX, which successfully landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time in 2015 to lower costs through reusability. SpaceX now regularly launches and lands Falcon 9 rockets and has flown over 160 times this year. ULA eventually hopes to recover and reuse only part of the Vulcan rocket, its BE-4 first stage engines built by Blue Origin.
"It has been a great privilege to lead ULA through its transformation and to bring Vulcan into service. My work here is now complete and I will be cheering ULA on," Bruno wrote on X.
"Finished the mission I came to do," he added. "Great people. Great rocket. New things coming."
In a statement, Robert Lightfoot and Kay Sears, the ULA board chairs for Lockheed Martin and Boeing, respectively, thanked Bruno for over a decade of service.
"We are grateful for Tory’s service to ULA and the country, and we thank him for his leadership," Lightfoot and Sears wrote in the statement.
ULA's board has appointed Boeing veteran John Elbon as interim CEO as the search for a new leader begins.
"We have the greatest confidence in John to continue strengthening ULA’s momentum while the board proceeds with finding the next leader of ULA," Lihtfoot and Sears wrote.
LATEST POSTS
- 1
How 2025 became the year of comet: The rise of interstellar 3I/ATLAS, an icy Lemmon and a cosmic SWAN - 2Dominating the Mastercard Endorsement Cycle: Six Fundamental Stages
- 3RSF attack on Sudan’s South Kordofan kills at least 14, including children
- 4Former Australian soldier arrested over alleged Afghan war crimes
- 5Distributed storage Answers for Information Reinforcement
- 10 Setting up camp Shelters That Offer Both Excellence and Isolation
- Vacation destinations in America
- The most effective method to Promoter for Cellular breakdown in the lungs Mindfulness in Your People group
- Astronomer captures 2 meteors slamming into the moon (video)
- The Solution to Flexibility: Developing Internal Fortitude Notwithstanding Misfortune
- How to watch the ‘Wicked: One Wonderful Night’ special — now streaming
- Mosquitoes carrying malaria are evolving more quickly than insecticides can kill them – researchers pinpoint how
- Figure out how to Separate Among Fledgling and Master Fender bender Legal counselors
- Verdicts against social media companies carry consequences. But questions linger
