ULA’s Vulcan Wins Certification for National Security Space Launches

The U.S. Space Force certified the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Vulcan rocket today, making it eligible to launch national security satellites. Two successful test flights are needed to win certification. The first went perfectly in January 2024, but a hiccup with the second in October delayed the process until now.

In announcing the news, the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF’s) Space Systems Command (SSC) said it expects the first National Security Space Launch (NSSL) on Vulcan this summer.

ULA had planned to launch two NSSL missions on Vulcan last fall, USSF-106 with Navigation Technology Satellite-3, and USSF-87, two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites. The announcement didn’t say which of those will be first.

Vulcan’s first certification flight, Cert-1, was perfect, sending Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander on its way towards the Moon.  (The spacecraft suffered a propulsion failure and didn’t reach the Moon, but it was unrelated to Vulcan.)

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

— ULA (@ulalaunch) January 8, 2024

The second flight, Cert-2, went quite well, but a nozzle on one of the two solid rocket boosters fell off during ascent. Vulcan’s core stage compensated for the change in thrust and reached the intended destination anyway, but it was enough to delay certification until now.

Vulcan during the “observation” seen during ULA’s Cert-2 mission this morning. Watch how the rocket moves to adjust after the flash.

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— D Wise (@dwisecinema) October 4, 2024

ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets have been used for NSSL launches for many years, but Vulcan is replacing both of them. Delta IV already has been phased out and the remaining Atlas V launches are for non-NSSL customers.

Created in 2006 as a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, bringing Boeing’s Delta and Lockheed Martin’s Atlas under common ownership, ULA was the sole national security launch provider until SpaceX became a competitor in the mid-2010s. As more launch companies entered the business, the USSF expanded opportunities, splitting missions into two “Lanes” in their Phase 3 procurement: Lane 1 for commercial-type launches with higher risk tolerance and Lane 2 for more traditional national security “heavy lift” missions with high mission assurance criteria.

ULA, SpaceX and Blue Origin won Phase 3 Lane 1 contracts last summer. Vulcan now joins SpaceX’s Falcon on the certified list. Blue Origin’s first certification flight of New Glenn took place in January.

SSC and ULA pointed out in separate statements that over the past several years they’ve completed “52 certification criteria, including more than 180 discrete tasks, two certification flight demonstrations, 60 payload interface requirement verifications, 18 subsystem design and test reviews, and 114 hardware and software audits” for Vulcan.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, SSC’s Program Executive Officer for Assured Access to Space, said  “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems. … The SSC and ULA teams have worked together extremely closely, and certification of this launch system is a direct result of their focus, dedication, and teamwork.”

Bruno stresses that he designed Vulcan specifically for the most challenging national security space missions.  Vulcan’s Centaur V upper stage, for example, is designed to remain attached to the satellite for long periods of time instead of detaching soon after reaching orbit. He told reporters earlier this month during the SATELLITE 2025 conference that “If I have longer duration, I can do unusual trajectories that would obfuscate where my destination is” and “multiple giant orbital changes” are possible.  “It’s 10-100 times more thrust, so what would take a spacecraft a week or two to do can be accomplished in minutes or hours if you’re still attached to the stage.”

Today he added that Vulcan’s “inaugural launch marked the beginning of a new era of space capabilities, providing higher performance while offering the world’s only high energy architecture rocket.”

ULA still has 15 Atlas V rockets in inventory.  Bruno told reporters at SATELLITE 2025 that the next ULA launch will be an Atlas V carrying satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband Internet satellite constellation. Atlas V has a 100 percent mission success rate, but ULA is replacing it because it’s powered by Russian RD-180 engines. Congress passed a law in 2016 after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea that set a time limit for the use of Russian engines for national security launches.