Lift off: U.S. Kicking Russian Rocket Engines to The Curb.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla
• Position: SPACE

After relying on Russianmade rocket engines for national security launches since the early 2000s, the United States is preparing to blast off with next-generation engines made within its borders.

United Launch Alliance--a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing--and Elon Musk's SpaceX are gearing up for the first batch of national security launches awarded to the companies in 2020. More than 30 launches will be carried out between ULA's Vulcan Centaur and SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from fiscal year 2022 through 2027 as part of phase 2 of the National Security Space Launch program, or NSSL.

The upcoming launches will allow the United States to phase out the Russian-made RD-180--the first-stage engine used to power ULA's Atlas V rocket.

The RD-180 engine is a dualcombustion chamber, dual-nozzle engine designed and built by the Russian company Energomash. The engine burns a mix of kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel to give it enough thrust for the initial boost phase of flight, said Chris Stone, senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Using the RD-180, the Atlas V rocket has carried out dozens of launches to deploy U.S. national security spacecraft--including military, spy and GPS satellites--as well as commercial launches. The Atlas V was the preferred vehicle for the Defense Department for nearly two decades, along with ULA's Delta IV family of rockets.

Both rockets gave the United States "assured access to space," a policy that ensures the capabilities necessary to launch and insert U.S. national security payloads into orbit, said ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno.

"We were set up originally to have two redundant systems at least for the government, because we were the only domestic launch company," Bruno said in an interview with National Defense. "What if your pad fails, or there's a flaw in one of the rockets? You always have to have two ways."

Despite the Atlas V's near perfect launch rate, Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea sparked calls from U.S. lawmakers to cut off the reliance on the RD-180 by making a new engine for the Atlas V on U.S. soil--a task easier said than done, Stone said.

"The idea was, 'Let's just design a new engine to stick in the back end of an Atlas V,' and that's not how it works," Stone said. "It's not like an airplane where you can slide out an engine and slide in a new one. You basically build the engine and design everything around...