Christopher Kubasik, CEO of L3Harris Technologies, said Jan. 27 regulators continue to review the company’s proposed $4.7 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne and expects the merger to close in 2023. L3Harris, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, is a global defense and aerospace firm with more than $17 billion in annual revenue. In December it announced an agreement to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne, a Sacramento, California-based manufacturer of rocket engines and propulsion systems for space vehicles, ballistic missiles and military tactical weapons. During a fourth-quarter earnings call, Kubasik said the company has been answering questions from Federal Trade Commission antitrust regulators. He said L3Harris executives have met with Pentagon officials to address questions on the acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne and its potential impact on defense programs. Kubasik did not comment on a recent letter sent by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to block the transaction. The FTC last year blocked Lockheed Martin’s proposed $4.4 billion bid for Aerojet Rocketdyne, arguing that the combination would give Lockheed — a major supplier of tactical missiles — the ability to “cut off other defense contractors from the critical components they need to build competing missiles.” L3Harris said it does not expect to face these same challenges because the combination with Aerojet would be a “horizontal move” rather than a vertical integration of a missile manufacturer and a key supplier of propulsion systems.
An Aerojet Rocketdyne RS-25 engine is tested at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, Dec 14, 2022. Credit: NASA
If the acquisition is approved, Kubasik said, there are no plans to close major facilities but he estimates about $50 million in overhead cost savings during the first year. “We both have offices in D.C. We both have offices in Huntsville. There’s some low hanging fruit there,” he said.
This would be L3Harris’ second of two back-to-back acquisitions. Earlier this month the company closed a nearly $2 billion purchase of Viasat’s tactical data links business.
“We got TDL done in 92 days, and the integration is already underway, so we can focus on getting Aerojet Rocketdyne approved, and then start the integration,” said Kubasik.
“I don’t foresee us doing any acquisitions for a couple of years, as you would imagine,” he told analysts. “There’s some non-core assets that we’re going to sell, and we’re going to use those proceeds to bring down our debt over the next few years.”
Aerojet Rocketdyne announced April 11 it has received an order from United Launch Alliance for 116 engines for the upper stage of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. Aerojet said this was the company’s largest ever contract for the RL10 engine. The large purchase of rocket engines comes on the heels of Amazon’s announcement April 5 that it selected Arianespace, Blue Origin and ULA to launch up to 3,236 satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband constellation. CEO Tory Bruno said ULA plans to fly Vulcan’s first mission late in 2022. Winning the Amazon deal would more than double the annual rate of Vulcan launches to as many as 25 per year, and ULA will ramp up production to meet the demand, Bruno said last week at the Space Symposium. ULA’s engine choice for Vulcan’s upper stage dates back to 2018 when it selected a variant of the RL10, the same engine used to power the upper stages of ULA’s legacy rockets Atlas 5 and Delta 4 Heavy. Over the past 60 years, more than 450 RL10 engines have flown on various ULA heritage vehicles. Due to a congressional mandate to end the U.S. military’s reliance on the Russian RD-180 rocket engine used in the Atlas 5’s first stage, ULA in 2015 announced it would build Vulcan Centaur as its next-generation rocket and selected Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine for the first stage. Each Vulcan Centaur upper stage will use two RL10C-X engines.
A Vulcan Centaur upper stage powered by two RL10 engines. Credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne
Aerojet said the RL10C-X is a variant of the RL1o developed for Vulcan Centaur that will “increase the use of additive manufacturing and introduce other advanced technologies to improve the quality, reliability, affordability and performance.”
The RL10C-X uses a 3D-printed main injector and main combustion chamber, and has a 94-inch monolithic lightweight composite nozzle. According to Aerojet, the specific impulse, or Isp, of the RL10C-X is 461 seconds, which “puts it near the very top of the RL10 engine family in terms of performance. Specific impulse measures the amount of thrust generated by a rocket engine per unit of propellant consumed per second.
The engine is made at Aerojet Rocketdyne’s facility near West Palm Beach, Florida. The RL10 also powers the upper stage of NASA’s Space Launch System.
During a meeting with reporters at the Space Symposium, Bruno said one of his key “supply chain” concerns is building enough rocket engines for Vulcan to meet the projected demand.
“We are most concerned about the things that are the most complicated to build and take the most time,” he said. “Those are rocket engines and rocket motors. So Blue Origin, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman are the key places we’ll focus on.” Northrop Grumman supplies Vulcan’s strap-on solid boosters.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has successfully completed a second series of propulsion system tests in support of the Operational Fires (OpFires) program, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) effort to develop a ground-launched hypersonic missile for tactical use."We're pleased to be a part of developing this vital defense technology, applying our decades of experience in hypersonic and missile defense technologies," said Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president. During the propulsion tests, called cold gas testing, the test articles operated successfully with all components providing critical data to the operation of the OpFires propulsion system. The test series followed last year's successful subscale propulsion test firings. DARPA's OpFires program aims to develop a two-stage missile capable of engaging high-value, time-sensitive targets from standoff range in contested environments. The effort to date has advanced the technology for an upper stage featuring a tunable propulsion system, according to DARPA. Aerojet Rocketdyne has been supporting the program through a Phase 1 contract to design propulsion concepts and technologies for OpFires. The contract continued with an $8.8 million option for Phase 2 of the program, which is expected to culminate in late 2020 following multiple test firings.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has long been a leader in hypersonic propulsion technology, with a breadth of capabilities to include scramjets, solid rocket motor boosters, warheads and missile defense technologies.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has been awarded a contract worth up to $19.6 million by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop enabling technologies for an advanced hypersonic defense interceptor known as Glide Breaker. "Advancing hypersonic technology is a national security imperative," said Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president. "Our team is proud to apply our decades of experience developing hypersonic and missile propulsion technologies to the Glide Breaker program." According to DARPA, the Glide Breaker program intends to advance the United States' means to counter hypersonic vehicles. The effort aims to develop and demonstrate a technology that is critical for enabling an advanced interceptor capable of engaging maneuvering hypersonic threats in the upper atmosphere. Aerojet Rocketdyne supplies both solid-fueled and air-breathing propulsion systems for hypersonic flight. The company provided both types of systems for the joint Air Force-DARPA-NASA X-51A WaveRider, which completed the first practical hypersonic flight of a hydrocarbon-fueled and -cooled scramjet-powered vehicle. More recently, the company successfully completed a series of subscale propulsion-system test firings as part of DARPA's Operational Fires (OpFires) program, which is an effort to develop a ground-launched hypersonic missile for tactical use.
Engineers and technicians at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans have structurally mated the first of four RS-25 engines to the core stage for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will help power the first Artemis mission to the Moon. Integration of the RS-25 engines to the recently completed core stage structure is a collaborative, multistep process for NASA and its partners Boeing, the core stage lead contractor, and Aerojet Rocketdyne, the RS-25 engines lead contractor. To complete the installation, the technicians will now integrate the propulsion and electrical systems. The installation process will be repeated for each of the four RS-25 engines. The four RS-25 engines used for Artemis I were delivered to Michoud from Aerojet Rocketdyne's facility at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, in June. The engines, located at the bottom of the core stage in a square pattern, are fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. During launch and flight, the four engines will fire nonstop for 8.5 minutes, emitting hot gases from each nozzle 13 times faster than the speed of sound. The completed core stage with all four engines attached will be the largest rocket stage NASA has built since the Saturn V stages for the Apollo Program.
NASA is working to land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024. SLS is part of NASA's backbone for deep space exploration, along with Orion and the Gateway in orbit around the Moon. SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts and supplies to the Moon on a single mission.
Aerojet Rocketdyne has entered into a Space Act Agreement with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to design and manufacture a lightweight rocket engine thrust chamber assembly using innovative additive manufacturing processes and materials. The goal of the project is to reduce manufacturing costs and make a thrust chamber that is easily scalable to support a variety of missions, including America's return to the Moon and subsequent missions to explore Mars. Aerojet Rocketdyne will use a unique combination of 3D printing technologies - including solid state deposition and laser deposition - to enable rapid fabrication of complex components. The vertical integration of these robotic additive manufacturing techniques is expected to yield a scalable design that could be applied to propulsion systems ranging from small systems that would support a lunar lander, all the way up to large boosters that enable launch vehicles to escape Earth's gravity. "As we look to the future of space exploration, efficiency and scalability will be key, which is why we are excited to work with NASA on this innovative thrust chamber for rocket engines," said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake. "The technology we develop will leverage the most advanced additive manufacturing techniques and materials to help provide efficient and safe transportation to and through space."
The effort is being facilitated by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate through its Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity (ACO) initiative, which aims to reduce the development cost of technologies and accelerate the infusion of emerging commercial capabilities into space missions.
Aerojet Rocketdyne recently completed qualification testing for the enhanced reaction control thruster system for NASA's Orion crew vehicle, helping to clear the way for the Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft's second test flight, and first mission to cislunar space, called Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1). The reaction control system, or RCS, is the only means of guiding the Orion crew module after it separates from its service module in preparation for atmospheric re-entry and subsequent splashdown. Consisting of 12 MR-104G hydrazine thrusters capable of 160 pounds of thrust each, the system also will ensure that the spacecraft is properly oriented (with its heat shield pointed downward) for re-entry, and stable during descent. Aerojet Rocketdyne employed cutting-edge additive manufacturing processes, also known as 3-D printing, in fabricating the RCS engine nozzle extensions. These 3-D printed components, along with other items on the spacecraft, mark one of the first times in history that a spacecraft carrying humans will incorporate additively manufactured parts. "Additive manufacturing eliminates traditional design constraints, as well as reduces manufacturing times," said Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president. "Our use of 3-D printing on Orion is just one example of how we are incorporating this breakthrough technology across our portfolio of propulsion products."
During the yearlong qualification test program at Aerojet Rocketdyne's Redmond, Washington, facility, a single engine was subjected to shock and vibration, exceeding the maximum stresses expected during the upcoming EM-1 launch.
For EM-1, Orion will be launched toward the Moon on the maiden flight of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The non-flight test engine - drawn from the same production lot as the EM-1 RCS flight engines - burned through 619 pounds of propellant during the test program, accumulating 962 seconds of total firing time.
"Following our rigorous qualification testing program, we're confident that this enhanced RCS system is ready to fly," added Drake. "The reaction control thrusters are critical to the Orion capsule's safe return to Earth at the completion of EM-1 as well as future crewed missions."
The EM-1 RCS thruster design builds on the flight proven engine demonstrated on the Exploration Flight Test-1 mission in 2014. The enhanced system features a stronger structure, increased resistance to thermal stresses and reduced mass. The improved manufacturing process updated the system to account for changed loads and to ultimately increase affordability.
On EM-1 an uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon before returning to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. It will be followed by EM-2, during which Orion will fly near the Moon with astronauts on board.
In addition to the RCS, Aerojet Rocketdyne is supplying the main- and upper-stage liquid engines for the SLS, and well as the jettison motor that will separate Orion's launch abort system from the crew module shortly after activation of the SLS's second stage.
The company also is supplying the auxiliary thrusters for Orion's European Service Module (ESM), and supported a NASA-led effort to modify a Space Shuttle OMS-E engine, originally built by Aerojet Rocketdyne for its new application as the ESM main maneuvering engine.
Aerojet Rocketdyne successfully fired its AR-22 booster rocket engine an unprecedented 10 times in 240 hours at NASA Stennis Space Center, demonstrating the feasibility of rapidly recycling the engine to enable a reusable launch vehicle capable of high-tempo, aircraft-like flight operations. "Aerojet Rocketdyne has continued to refine the reusable engine technology we originally developed for the Space Shuttle program," said Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president. "With the AR-22 we are taking reusability to the next level and have demonstrated that daily, affordable access to space is within reach." The highly anticipated test sequence was carried out as part of the collaboration between Boeing and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on the Experimental Spaceplane program. Boeing is designing and developing the Phantom Express spaceplane for this program and the successful engine test results will help improve the spaceplane's design. "Phantom Express is a disruptive, reusable launch system. Successfully completing this highly demanding rocket engine test series validated a new level of booster capability for this transformational launch vehicle," continued Drake.
"Turning the AR-22 within 24 hours repeatedly over 10 days demonstrates the capability of this engine and the ability to enable rapid, responsive access to space."
On Tuesday, July 3, DARPA director Steve Walker visited NASA Stennis Space Center to view one of the engine tests. He complimented the team on their support of national security, highlighting their demonstration of the importance of the speed of relevance.
The liquid-oxygen and hydrogen-fueled AR-22 engine, capable of generating more than 375,000 pounds of thrust, fired at full throttle during the tests, each lasting at least 100 seconds in duration. After each firing, Aerojet Rocketdyne technicians carried out pre-planned inspections and data reviews in preparation for the next test.
The 10 test firings took place in a test period conducted June 26 to July 6, 2018.
"Aerojet Rocketdyne is very proud to have such an important role in a program that could literally revolutionize space access with a vehicle capable of launching on a daily basis," Drake added.
"With the Defense Department and commercial sector anticipating a shift toward constellations of smaller satellites that can be replenished quickly, the Phantom Express is the right program at the right time for the nation."
The Phantom Express spaceplane is designed to launch vertically and land horizontally to allow for aircraft-like operations in support of the U.S. government's resilient space vision and commercial missions. The vehicle will be equipped with an expendable second stage capable of placing up to 3,000 pounds or 1,361 kg of payload into low Earth orbit.
