In an announcement highly anticipated by United Launch Alliance and others in the spaceflight community, the U.S. Space Force’s Assured Access to Space (AATS) office affirmed that the Vulcan rocket is now fully certified to launch national security payloads.
The completion of this multi-year process means that the USSF’s Space Systems Command can begin launching National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions on the two-stage, heavy-lift rocket.
“Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security,” said Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, Program Executive Officer for AAST, in a statement. “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems.”
ULA and the U.S. Air Force forged a plan for the certification of Vulcan in September 2016. Years of development led to the rocket first certification flight (Cert-1) in January 2024 when it launched the Peregrine-1 mission on behalf of Astrobotic and NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
Initially, ULA wanted to fly Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser on its Cert-2 mission, but the winged spaceship wasn’t ready in time. Instead, it pivoted to a launch in October carrying no payload to fulfill the need for a second certification flight.
It was during that flight that one of the rocket’s two solid rocket boosters, a Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL, experienced a burn through less than a minute into flight, which resulted in the liberation of the nozzle. ULA was able to complete its mission as intended, but the anomaly resulted in a month’s long investigation into the root cause.
ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno announced the conclusion of that investigation during a media roundtable in Washington D.C. on March 12.
“We have isolated the root cause, appropriate corrective actions and those were qualified and confirmed in a full-scale static motor firing in Utah last month,” Bruno said. “We are back in continuing to fabricate hardware.”
Bruno said there was a manufacturing defect in one of the internal parts of the nozzle. ULA posted a nearly 12-minute video on YouTube that walked through their diagnosis process and showed a clip of the aforementioned static fire test.
In addition to the work during and following the two certification flights, ULA said it also completed 52 certification criteria, which included 60 payload interface requirement verifications and 18 subsystem design and test reviews.
“Thank you to all our customer partners who have worked hand-in-hand with us throughout this comprehensive certification process. We are grateful for the collaboration and excited to reach this critical milestone in Vulcan development,” Bruno said in a statement. “Vulcan is uniquely designed to meet the challenging requirements demanded by an expanding spectrum of missions for U.S. national security space launches. Moreover, this next-generation rocket provides high performance and extreme accuracy while continuing to deliver to our customer’s most challenging and exotic orbits.”
NSSL Phase 2
The completion of Vulcan’s certification is a long awaited achievement for the U.S. government. In August 2020, SpaceX and ULA won contracts for the NSSL Phase 2 program. Similarly to Phase 1, it divided the number of national security payload missions over a series of order number years.
When the contract was established, the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), which later became Space Systems Command, divided the launches roughly 60-40, with ULA receiving the majority of those missions. When all was said and done, ULA was assigned 26 mission and 23 went to SpaceX.
ULA launched its first NSSL Phase 2 mission, USSF-51, on July 30, 2024, after switching from Vulcan to an Atlas 5 rocket. In a post shared by Bruno to his LinkedIn page, there are three Vulcan boosters at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Two of those are earmarked for the first two NSSL Phase 2 missions: USSF-106 and USSF-87. Following the forthcoming launch of Kuiper-1 on behalf of Amazon and its Project Kuiper internet constellation (using an Atlas 5 rocket), ULA will launch the USSF-106 mission from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41).
In its statement on Wednesday, SSC said USSF-106 is expected to launch “this summer.”
The timing of the Vulcan certification announcement aligns with statements made by SSC to Spaceflight Now in late December. At that point, an SSC spokesperson said,“The government anticipates completion of its evaluation and certification in the first quarter of calendar year 2025.”
The spokesperson added that it anticipated the first Vulcan NSSL mission to launch “in the second quarter 2025.” With the second quarter ending on June 30, ULA may just be a few months from launching its first NSSL mission.
However, that will depend on the readiness of the payload and if there are delays related to the Kuiper-1 mission.
Bruno said he also expects to be launching Vulcan rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California before the end of the year.
