ULA’s Vulcan cleared for national-security launches

United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan heavy-lift rocket has a green light to send military payloads into space, poising the company to compete against SpaceX for Pentagon contracts. 

“Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems,” Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, the program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said in the announcement today. 

ULA now joins SpaceX as a cleared provider for the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program. Blue Origin is aiming to join them by following its successful maiden flight in January with a second certification flight required for the Space Force’s thumbs-up.

Vulcan hasn’t had an easy path to certification. The rocket is years behind schedule, and during its own second certification flight in October, material broke off one of the solid rocket boosters. ULA found that the anomaly was caused by a “manufacturing defect” in the solid rocket motor nozzle, company CEO Tory Bruno said. 

“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, so, we are back in continuing to fabricate hardware and at least initially screening for what that root cause was, which was a manufacturing defect of one of the internal parts of the nozzle insulator,” Bruno told reporters earlier this month.

The Vulcan problems delayed the launch of two Space Force missions, USSF-106 and USSF-87, which are on the docket for later this year. 

The new rocket is the cornerstone of ULA’s strategy to challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which upended the space launch market that the joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin  had dominated for years.

Musk has been playing an outsized role in President Donald Trump’s administration, fueling optimism among space companies that more investment may be on the horizon. But the billionaire’s influence has also raised questions about potential conflicts of interest, as his company continues to receive highly lucrative contracts from the Pentagon.

Asked about Musk’s involvement in the new administration and the potential implications for launch competitions, Bruno said he expects to see a fair procurement process—and that there’s plenty of launches to go around. 

“It would be our expectation that the procurement process continues to be fair and balanced and truly values competition, because that's how you have the most healthy ecosystem in your industrial base. It's how you can justify investments in technology. It's how you keep downward price pressure for the customer? So we would want to, and expect to see that continuing in this environment. I wouldn't want to see a trend towards any kind of monopoly positions for any one provider or the other,” he said.