ULA’s Vulcan Centaur Lifts Off on First National Security Mission

ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket lifted off on a national security mission for the first time this evening. One payload aboard the U.S. Space Force’s USSF-106 mission is the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 that is testing new technologies for future satellite navigation systems like GPS. NTS-3 is a small spacecraft on a very big rocket being launched in one of its most capable configurations. The USSF is not saying what else is aboard.

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur launched at 8:56 pm ET tonight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, almost at the end of its one-hour launch window.

LIFTOFF of the United Lunch Alliance Vulcan rocket, continuing ULA’s soaring legacy in national security space launch!

Launch info: https://t.co/ZNSovZl0Lu
Photos: https://t.co/QbM4zpZ6I1 pic.twitter.com/vU4hw4F0PI

— ULA (@ulalaunch) August 13, 2025

To recap, #VulcanRocket launched at 8:56 p.m. EDT (0056 UTC) from Cape Canaveral for @SpaceForceDOD and @USSF_SSC. At the request of our customer, this will conclude our live play-by-play coverage of today’s countdown and liftoff of #USSF106 on its way to geosynchronous orbit.… pic.twitter.com/t2NbF4L95Q

— ULA (@ulalaunch) August 13, 2025

NTS-3 is just the third experimental navigation satellite in the history of the U.S. navigation satellite program. The last was in 1977. Dr. Joanna Hinks, Senior Research Aerospace Engineer, told reporters at a Space Systems Command (SSC) media roundtable yesterday she’s been working on NTS-3 for the entire 10 years she’s been at Air Force Research Laboratory. L3 Harris is the prime contractor.

Hinks and L3Harris’s Andrew Builta highlighted some of the technologies NTS-3 is testing. Builta said this is the first U.S. satellite navigation systems “to integrate phased array technology to focus powerful beams to ground forces and combat jamming environments.” The “signal processors provide unprecedented flexibility to support different signal types and strengths and [are] capable of being reprogrammed on orbit.”  Reprogrammability is “truly game changing … what historically required a new satellite block of production and design can now be added within a few weeks.”

Hinks said the satellite is designed to operate for one year and the total cost is $250 million for the satellite plus ground system operations. The spacecraft mass is 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds).

That’s not much for such a powerful rocket. What else is aboard is a closely held secret.  SSC’s Col. Jim Horne said yesterday that further information was “not releasable to the public.” He was Mission Director and Senior Materiel Leader for NTS-3 at SSC and was recently appointed as commander of Space Launch Delta 30.

ULA ended live coverage of the launch before reaching orbit. ULA President Tory Bruno enthused last week that this is exactly the type of mission Vulcan Centaur was designed for — direct injection into geosynchronous orbit with a very long burn time. He wasn’t permitted to say how long that was.

Vulcan’s first stage is powered by two Blue Origin BE-4  liquid methane/liquid oxygen (methalox) engines. The Centaur upper state has two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL-10s. To increase launch capacity, Vulcan may have two, four, or six Northrop Grumman Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) attached to the side. Today’s USSF-106 needed four.

Vulcan is replacing ULA’s Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. The final Delta IV flew in 2024. Thirteen more Atlas Vs are waiting to launch missions for commercial customers, but the final Atlas V launch for the USSF was in July 2024. The USSF has been eagerly awaiting the U.S.-made Vulcan, which eliminates their dependency on the Russian-made RD-180 engines that power Atlas V.

Atlas V has a 100 percent mission success record, but after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) insisted the U.S. end its dependence on Russian hardware to put national security satellites into space. After intense debate in the Senate, then-Senator Bill Nelson brokered a deal in 2016 setting limits on the number of RD-180s ULA could buy and how long they could be used for military missions. Civil and commercial launches were not affected.

ULA had already begun working on a new rocket by then, reaching agreement in 2014 with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to build the engines. At the time, Bruno optimistically forecast the first ULA rocket with a BE-4 engine would launch in four years, but delays in building the rocket and the engines pushed the first launch to January 2024.

That was the first of two certification flights, Cert-1 and Cert-2, required by the USSF before putting expensive national security payloads on board. Cert-1 went perfectly. Cert-2 was supposed to launch Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane to take cargo to the International Space Station, but as time went on and Dream Chaser wasn’t ready (it still isn’t), ULA decided to fly Cert-2 with just a mass simulator and a few ULA experiments on board so certification could proceed.

In October 2024, Cert-2 put its payload precisely into orbit, but an anomaly with one of the two SRBs marred the flight. The USSF finally certified Vulcan in March, but resolving the SRB problems and synchronizing satellite deliveries meant they weren’t ready to launch until today.