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Vulcan's second demonstration flight, known as Cert-2, lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Oct. 4, 2024.
The U.S. Space Force has certified United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket to fly high-priority national security space missions, fulfilling the goal of a program nearly a decade in the making.
The certification, announced March 26, followed completion and review of 180 discrete tasks, two flight demonstrations, 60 payload interface requirement verifications, 18 subsystem design and test reviews, and 114 hardware and software audits by ULA and the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC.)
“We are grateful for the collaboration and excited to reach this critical milestone in Vulcan development,” President and CEO Tory 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.”
“The SSC and ULA teams have worked together extremely closely, and certification of this launch system is a direct result of their focus, dedication and teamwork,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space. “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems.”
ULA had hoped to have the Vulcan launch system certified for national security space launch (NSSL) missions in 2024. Among the issues to be cleared was a solid rocket booster nozzle anomaly on Cert-2, the second demonstration flight.
Post-flight analysis showed a manufacturing defect in the nozzle’s insulator, Bruno told reporters March 12.
ULA recovered Vulcan’s two Northrop Grumman-built solid rocket boosters after the Cert-2 launch and compared the affected components. “The trimmings were very, very different from the other ones,” Bruno said. “It just stood out, night and day. It’s pretty clear that that was an outlier, far out of family.”
ULA has about 70 missions on its Vulcan manifest, including 47 for Amazon’s planned Kuiper broadband satellite network. The rocket has already replaced ULA’s heritage Delta IV Heavy launcher, and will soon replace its ongoing Atlas V program.
The first NSSL mission on Vulcan is expected this summer.
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