Tory Bruno: ULA Continues to Back Upcoming Space Missions Amid COVID-19 Outbreak

Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance and a previous Wash100 award winner, said ULA and other launch services providers have business continuity plans in place to deal with pandemics, fires, hurricanes and other emergencies and added that the company continues to support forthcoming missions amid the coronavirus outbreak, SpaceNews reported Tuesday.

“We are limiting the size of meetings and we are limiting non essential business travel but that doesn’t include launch and rockets obviously,” Bruno told reporters Tuesday at the Satellite 2020 conference. “Our teams have to travel to launch sites to make that happen, that’s business essential.”

When asked about the potential impact of COVID-19 on the space industry during a panel discussion at the conference, Bruno said he does not think the coronavirus crisis “will have a lasting or chilling effect on our country’s priorities.”

ULA is scheduled on March 21 to launch the sixth Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, AEHF-6, for the U.S. Space Force from Cape Canaveral in Florida.