Many years of delays in the United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Rocket have turned national security mission scripts and made SpaceX a new and trusted provider.
Elon Musk’s shift to the company, which is at a disadvantage with ULA’s bottom line, will be on the pad again on Friday, with SpaceX Falcon 9 set up and launching the GPS III-7 mission from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station space launch complex. On Friday, the improvement will only be 50% on Saturday.
The mission to launch a GPS satellite is the second satellite originally awarded to ULA, but transferred to SpaceX under the National Security Space Release Phase 2 contract. Originally assigned to ULA’s Vulcan, which was released in December 2024, this was shifted to the Falcon 9 as it faced an extended delay in authentication for alternatives for both Atlas V and Delta IV class rockets.
It’s called the GPS III-7 mission, but in reality it flies the eighth of the 10 satellites built by Lockheed Martin to add US GPS capabilities in space. It is also part of an acceleration mission timeline laid out by the Space Force of the National Security Mission, where the payload reaches space from departure within three months, compared to a regular turnaround that could take up to 24 months.
“It highlights another instance of the Space Force’s ability to complete high-priority launches on a rapid timescale, indicating its ability to respond to the needs of an emergency constellations as quickly as spacecraft preparations allow.
According to Space Force, the latest GPS satellites are already three times more accurate and eight times more resistant than the 38 of 38 spaces.
The Department of Defense’s desire to launch more effective GPS hardware was forced to switch to SpaceX on both missions, as it is less susceptible to interference.
It was initially announced that the NSSL Phase 2 contract, which features five years of task orders announced between 2020 and 2024, would grant ULA 60% of the allocation. All of these were to fly in the Vulcan, with the first launch expected to be completed by the summer of 2022.
However, as the Vulcan faced countless delays, the final order of the task ended up placing 26 missions on the ULA plates on SpaceX’s 22. Currently, two of these missions have been replaced by ULA for SpaceX, but Space Force says ULA will reclaim two future missions previously assigned to SpaceX.
Until now, ULA was able to fly only one of these 26 missions, but it was not in the Vulcan. Instead, ULA was forced to use one of the few remaining Atlas V Rockets that flew last summer.
ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin formed in 2006, originally targeted mid-2020 for the Vulcan debut. However, they faced hurdles from Covid, the acquisition of engines from supplier Blue Origin, delays from customer payloads, and even a fiery test stand incident that contributed to nearly four years of slides.
It first flew in January 2024, but it didn’t do it again until October as part of ULA’s efforts to obtain national security accreditation. However, the issue of solid rocket booster motor detaching during boot on the second flight delayed its authentication until March 2025.
At this point, Major General Stephen G. Purdy, the Air Force’s representative vice-secretary for space acquisition and integration, said the first national security launch in the Balkan will not take place until at least July.
Purdy, former head of Delta 45, a former Patrick Space Force Base-based space launch, raised concerns about ULA delays during written testimony released earlier this month to the US House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on Strategic Forces.
“In NSSL Phase 2, the ULA Vulcan program has been unhappy over the past year,” he writes. “The Vulcan major issues have overshadowed successful certifications and resulted in delays in the launch of four national security missions. Despite the highly successful retirements of Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to the Vulcan is slow and continues to affect the completion of Space Force mission targets.”
The Vulcan was only partially certified, and only five of Space Force’s nine required track needs were signed off, Purdy said. He said ULA has increased its “technology resources and management focus to solve design problems,” while government officials are involved in both technical and program management.
Purdy said ULA’s first national security launch at Vulcan would be USSF-106. Payload, navigation technology satellite-3 heads into Earth orbit. It was built by L3Harris and funded by the Air Force Research Institute and potential exchange technology of GPS. This was one of two task orders given to ULA in 2020, and was valued at $337 million. Another USSF-51 was released on the Atlas V last summer.
With ULA handling the backlog of its Phase 2 contract mission, some of the company’s next pie have been reduced. Earlier this year, Space Force unveiled SpaceX rather than ULA, winning the majority of its Phase 3 contracts, administering a total of $13.7 billion over the next five years. SpaceX receives 28 of the 54 planned missions, or 52%. Meanwhile, ULA takes only 19 missions, or 35%, while newcomers Blue Origin get 7 or 13%.
Purdy confirmed that ULA has already lost on several phase 3 contracts due to delays in the Vulcan, and dealt with what he deemed a ULA march order along with other commercial providers lacking in deliveries to the government.
“For these programs, key contractors must prove that they are reestablishing baselines, establishing a culture of accountability, repairing trust deficits and adopting the acquisition principles necessary to provide capabilities in speed, cost and schedule,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ura has his toes back into launch, lining up only the second planned mission of the year. Following the April launch of the first mission of Project Kuiper, an Internet satellite sign intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink system, the second mission is targeting lift-offs by June 13th.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has already flew the Falcon 9 this year on 64 missions, including 43 from Space Coast.
Original issue: May 30, 2025 6am Edt
