United Launch Alliance fired a next-generation Vulcan rocket Friday in the second of two “Certification” test flights needed before the new launcher can be used to carry high-priority national security payloads for the U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.
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One of two solid propellant strap boosters supplied by Northrop Grumman suffered an apparent nozzle failure during the rise of the lower atmosphere, but the Vulcan was able to continue to orbit.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno, responding to a reader on
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The Vulcan’s two originally blue BE-4 engines and twin solid rocket engines, or SRBS, roared to life at 7:25 a.m. EDT, shattering the morning calm with the crackling roar of 2 million pounds of thrust.
The 202-foot-tall, 1.5-million-pound rocket, decked out in a swirling red and white livery, soared skyward from Launch Complex 41 at Space Force Station Cape Canaveral, rapidly accelerating out of the dense lower atmosphere on an easterly trajectory.
The booster anomaly could be seen in long-range tracking camera views when a shower of sparks and what looked like debris drifted away from the right SRB 37 seconds after liftoff. The exhaust plume from this booster changed dramatically, but the rocket continued its climb into space.
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Bruno told another reader on X: “Yes, it looks dramatic, like all things on a rocket. But, it’s just the nozzle releasing. No explosion occurred.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware of Booster’s matter, adding “no public injuries or public property damage had been reported. The FAA is evaluating the operation and will issue an updated statement if the agency determines an investigation is warranted.”
Aside from the anomaly, the strap boosters exhausted and were abandoned approximately two minutes after takeoff. The methane-burning BE-4s, each generating 550,000 pounds of thrust, continued to raise the rocket from the lower atmosphere for another three minutes before shutting down.
The expendable stage then drifted away to crash into the Atlantic and the flight continued on the power of the Centaur 5’s twin Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C engines.
The upper stage fired its engines a second time after reaching orbit to demonstrate its ability to restart in space, a key requirement for military payloads requiring complex “high-energy” trajectories to reach their operational orbits.
The vulcans Maiden Launch January 8 I left without a hitch, successfully sending a commercially built lunar lander on its way. For its second flight, ULA initially planned to launch a Sierra space winged cargo ship – Dream Chaser – on its maiden flight, but the spacecraft could not be delivered on time.
Instead, ULA put a dummy payload atop the Vulcan, a so-called “mass simulator,” added some technology demonstration experiments to help enable long-duration flights, and installed additional instrumentation to record as much data as possible during the 54-minute demonstration.
The “cert 2” mission “literally has one main objective, which is to go and fly a second time and have another success,” Bruno said before the launch. Assuming a review of flight data confirms good performance, he added, “Then you’re ready to fly national security payloads.”
How the solid fuel booster issue might play into this data review and the rocket’s eventual certification is not yet known.
But two such missions are planned for later this year, which Bruno described as “urgent.” Although he did not mention any space payload or NRO, national security missions typically launch satellites capable of optical and radar imaging, wiretapping, encrypted communications relays and other top secret payloads.
Because the Vulcan did not carry an active payload for its second flight, ULA added “more instrumentation that we can use to simply characterize a vehicle,” Bruno said.
“We’re putting all sorts of other instruments (in) just to help us better understand how the rocket works as we go forward. So that’s the mission, a second flight to become certified, and then some technology experiments.”
ULA managers describe the Vulcan as “the future of our company.” It replaces the Delta 4 family of rockets, which has already been retired, and the venerable Atlas line which dates back to the early days of the US space program.
ULA still has 15 Atlas 5 rockets in its inventory. Eight will be used to launch Amazon’s Kuiper Internet relay satellites, six are reserved to launch the Boeing Starliner Crew ferry to the International Space Station and one is reserved to augment a Viasat communications satellite into orbit.
Once these missions are flown over the next few years, the Vulcan will be the company’s sole launch vehicle.
“The system that we’ve developed really positions us for a very bright and prosperous future for many years to come,” Mark Peller, ULA’s vice president of Vulcan development, said before the rocket’s first flight. “It has already proven to be an extremely competitive product in the market, having a backlog of over 70 missions before first flight.”
Unlike the Atlas 5, which uses Russian-built Rd-180 engines to power the rocket’s first stage, the All-American Powered Vulcan relies on two first-stage BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
On takeoff, the BE-4S twins generate a combined thrust of 1.1 million pounds. The two strap-on solid-property boosters generate an additional 919,200 pounds of thrust, providing a total thrust of just over 2 million pounds. The Vulcan can be launched with up to six straps depending on mission requirements.
Centaur 5’s hydrogen-powered upper stage engines generate 23,825 pounds of thrust, making it possible to launch heavy military payloads to so-called high-energy orbits that cannot be easily reached by rockets optimized for low orbit.
Bruno would not reveal the cost of a Vulcan rocket, other than to say it was less than $100 million, making it competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Rockets.
“Then after this mission there will be some missions for the space force,” Bruno said. “We expect them to be ready to go this year, hence the urgency and no longer being able to wait for the dream chaser.”
