Can ULA clear the final hurdle on Vulcan?

Despite delays, United Launch Alliance says its Vulcan heavy-lift rocket will still fly two missions for the Space Force before the end of the year—if the rocket’s second flight goes smoothly.

Vulcan had its maiden flight in January, years behind schedule. But ULA has to complete a second certification flight—scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral this Friday—before the rocket can start flying operational missions for the Pentagon. 

So far, the second flight is on track to be “another perfect launch like Cert-1,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno told reporters Wednesday ahead of the launch. 

Bruno said he’s confident that Vulcan will be certified in time to launch two Space Force missions, USSF-106 and USSF-87, by the end of the year—but that’s a tight timeline considering that nine months passed between the first and second certification flights. Bruno didn’t provide details on the service’s certification timeline, but said “as long as it's a very clean mission, it's a short number of weeks to get it all done.”

Pentagon officials have previously expressed concern over ULA’s ability to ramp up its launch cadence essentially tenfold in the coming years. The company launched three rockets in 2023, but is slated to launch 25 national-security missions by the end of 2027. 

In June, ULA co-owners Lockheed and Boeing formed an independent review team to keep Vulcan on track. Bruno said the team came up with “great suggestions” and tools for ULA to improve its production planning and management. “I guess I'll say that everything that they brought to me as recommendations, I thought were great ideas, and I plan to do them,” he said. 

ULA officials once hoped Vulcan would fly for the second time in April. But delays with the intended payload—Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser space plane—pushed that timeline back. And since the Sierra payload still isn’t ready, ULA will launch a dummy payload, plus some “experiments and demonstrations,” on the second certification flight, according to company officials. Since there isn’t a customer for this second flight, ULA will eat the entire cost of the launch, which is in the “high tens of millions of dollars,” Bruno said.

He admitted it won’t be easy to get to 20 launches next year (split roughly half-and-half between the Vulcan and Atlas rockets), but said, “I know how to do that, it needs to be done, and I'm not daunted at all.” 

Vulcan is the centerpiece of ULA’s plan to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which upended the space launch market ULA had dominated for years. SpaceX is also developing its own heavy-lift rocket, Starship. 

ULA made a huge bet on Vulcan, expecting Pentagon and commercial contracts for years to come, and has invested “$5 to $7 billion” on the rocket itself, as well as more than a billion on infrastructure, to support bigger factories, more tooling, and more capacity throughout the supply chain, Bruno said.

ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin are competing for a slew of launches under the Space Force’s new satellite launch competition, called National Security Space Launch Phase 3. The companies will vie for $5.6 billion worth of contracts over the next five years.