Northrop Kicks Russia to the Curb, Will Build an All-American Rocket
Six months ago, Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) had a problem. Today, it has a solution.
When Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, they provoked both an international humanitarian crisis, and on a smaller scale a crisis for Northrop Grumman's space program. Over the past decade, Northrop had developed a new medium-class launch vehicle called the "Antares" rocket, which it has used to -- among other things -- perform its share of a $14 billion, multi-party, multi-year NASA contract to resupply the International Space Station (ISS).
The problem is that Antares depends on RD-181 main rocket engines that are produced in Russia, and a core stage that is manufactured in Ukraine. But with Russia under sanctions, and Ukraine in the middle of a shooting war, this has essentially shut down production of new Antares rockets for Northrop, imperiling the hundreds of millions of dollars the company was supposed to collect for its work on the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract.
Source Fool.com
