ULA Changes Plans for Vulcan’s Second Certification Mission

The United Launch Alliance will not wait for Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft to be ready before launching the second certification mission of its new Vulcan rocket. Instead it will launch a mass simulator and use the “Cert-2” flight to test the capabilities of the new Centaur V upper stage. Cert-2 must be successfully accomplished before Vulcan can be used for national security space launches, two of which need to lift off before the end of the year.

ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno told reporters today that he’s excited about launching Dream Chaser and really wanted it to go on Cert-2, but Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice advised him it may not be ready for a while.

Dream Chaser is a small, winged vehicle that looks a lot like the Space Shuttle. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) hoped to win one of NASA’s commercial crew contracts in 2014 and use it to launch astronauts to the International Space Station, but lost out to Boeing and SpaceX. It did win a contract in the second round of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services bids in 2016 to deliver cargo to the ISS, joining SpaceX and Northrop Grumman (which acquired Orbital ATK). The date for the first launch has slipped repeatedly, however.

SNC spun off Sierra Space in 2021 as an independent commercial space company.

Dream Chaser is making “excellent progress,” Bruno said, but “we have been informed by Sierra Space that they feel they have significant risk toward making the flight date” that was planned. “They have told us they will step aside in order to support our critical national security space missions” that are waiting. ULA will work to put Dream Chaser back on the launch manifest “when they are ready to go.”

The U.S. Space Force requires new rockets to be certified before putting their critical, expensive satellites on board. It’s up to the launch service provider, ULA in this case, to execute those certification missions.

Cert-2 will carry a mass simulator, an inert payload that fills up payload space instead of a spacecraft, that Bruno said was originally built as a backup in case the payload for the first certification mission, Cert-1, wasn’t ready. It was, though. Cert-1 sent Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander on its way towards the Moon in January. Although Peregrine didn’t work as planned, Vulcan’s performance was picture perfect.

LIFTOFF of the first United Launch Alliance #VulcanRocket! pic.twitter.com/wZMlPxWr4l

— ULA (@ulalaunch) January 8, 2024

That means the mass simulator is still available and will launch on Cert-2 in September. ULA will use the opportunity to put the Centaur V upper stage through its paces “to help us better understand the full capability of the Centaur V, to measure some of its attributes.” A few experiments also will be aboard, but they are proprietary and Bruno declined to provide details.

ULA has a launch on its other rocket, Atlas V, before Cert-2 that Bruno wasn’t allowed to discuss, and two national security launches, USSF-106 and USSF-87, after the U.S. Space Force certifies Vulcan.

ULA will conduct a total of eight launches this year. That number ramps up to 20 next year on both Vulcan and Atlas, which is being phased out.

Established in 2006 as a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, ULA has focused on the government market for most of its existence, but is moving more and more into commercial launches for which there is considerable demand.

ULA builds rockets in Decatur, AL and ships them either to Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) or California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base for launch, depending on the satellite’s orbital destination. The rockets are assembled at the launch site in a Vertical Integration Facility or VIF.  With the growing demand for launches from CCSFS, ULA has decided to convert an existing facility into a second VIF that should be ready next year. The current VIF will be designated VIF-G for government launches and the new one as VIF-C for commercial.

ULA has been the subject of some government consternation recently. In May, Frank Calvelli, Air Force Assistant Secretary for Space Acquisition and Integration, wrote to Boeing and Lockheed Martin expressing concern about ULA’s ability to manufacture enough Vulcan rockets and launch them in a timely manner to meet DOD’s needs and called for an independent review over the next 90 days.

Bruno said he welcomed getting advice from the Independent Review Team (IRT) adding that they are shifting away from looking at production and fabrication to focus on getting the launch site ready. They are not auditors but “are meant to come in and help you.” He plans to create his own IRT later and may ask some of the same people to be on it.  “We have a great IRT. I know most of the people on it and the people that I don’t personally know, I know by reputation. I may steal a few of them on the other side of this for the, I’ll call it the permanent IRT.”

Bruno is bullish on the launch market and Vulcan’s future. ULA’s primary domestic competitor is SpaceX, but Blue Origin is expected to begin launches of New Glenn very soon. At the same time, Europe is getting close to the inaugural launch of its new Ariane 6.  But he isn’t worried about market share. This is the “first time ever” where there’s  “considerably more demand for lift than there is supply” and “there’s going to be plenty of launches for everybody.”