The United Launch Alliance can begin its national security mission flight as it received a new Vulcan Rocket accreditation by Space Force on Wednesday. This was scheduled to debut.
ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV Rockets alternatives faced several delays and flew a $8.5 billion mission under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, after being selected as one of two major providers alongside SpaceX in 2020.
These missions were expected to have had their first Vulcan flights between 2020 and 2024, by the summer of 2022.
However, the Vulcan, which had to complete two certified flights for Space Force, was released in October, following its first release in January 2024. An issue with nozzles poking out of the solid rocket booster that supports the second launch added additional delays to certification.
When the second flight took off, ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno had planned to fly the first flight for the Space Force by the end of the year with Rocket certified and Rocket to fly by the end of the year.
However, after nearly six months of delay between launch and certification, ULA can line up a backlog of 24 missions from ordering NSSL tasks.
“We would like to thank all our customer partners who have worked with us through this comprehensive certification process,” Bruno said in a press release. “We are grateful for the collaboration and are excited to reach this important milestone in Vulcan development.”
The certification also means that Vulcan will be able to consider ordering more NSSL tasks under the new Phase 3 program, but ULA currently has SpaceX and Blue Origin as competitors for these contracts.
Bruno remains bullish about the Vulcan abilities.
“The Vulcan is uniquely designed to meet the challenging requirements required by the expanding mission for the launch of the US national security space,” he said. “And more, this next-generation rocket will continue to reach our customers’ most challenging and exotic tracks while still delivering high performance and extreme accuracy.”
Despite SpaceX earning national security slack during Vulcan Delays, ULA Rocket’s capabilities are something Space Force personnel are worried about waiting.
Brig. Space Force Base-based Space Space Systems Command (SSC) has been working hard since the second launch of the Vulcan, General Christine Panzenhagen, the program executive for the guaranteed space force of Delta 45, who is responsible for access to Space Force’s space program and space launch, said:
“The SSC and ULA teams work very closely, and the certification of this launch system is a direct result of focus, dedication and teamwork,” Panzenhagen said.
However, delays in the certification process forced ULA to switch preparations for its next launch.
For now, we’ve lined up one of the few remaining Atlas V Rockets for a commercial mission to fly Amazon’s first project, Kuiper Satellites, but no launch date has been announced.
The first national security launch could be a USSF-106 from the Space Launch Complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It was built by L3Harris and funded by the Air Force Research Institute and the potential exchange technology of GPS.
USSF-106 was one of two task orders given to ULA in 2020, worth $337 million. Another USSF-51 was launched in the summer of 2024 and is the only 26 that has been first given to ULA to date. It was scheduled to be in the Vulcan, but I moved to Atlas V.
ULA actually lost another of the 26 orders when Space Force shifted to SpaceX.
The NSSL Phase 2 contract originally aimed at awarding 60% of Missions, with SpaceX winning 40%. However, as the Vulcans were delayed and more complicated, SpaceX ended up with more task orders by the final year of the Phase 2 contract. So far, ULA has finished with a 25 mission to SpaceX’s 23.
While no major orders for phase 3 contracts have been announced yet, a subset under an onboarding programme designed so far to be awarded to SpaceX has been awarded so far.
Original issue: March 26, 2025, 4:03pm EDT
