ULA launches second Vulcan flight and encounters strap-on booster anomaly – Spaceflight Now

The United Launch Alliance fired a next-generation Vulcan rocket on Friday in the second of two “certification” test flights required before the new launch vehicle can carry high-national security payloads for the U.S. Space Force and National Reconnaissance Office can be used.

One of the two solid-propellant strap-on boosters provided by Northrop Grumman suffered some sort of anomaly while climbing out of the lower atmosphere, but the Vulcan managed to get further into orbit. It’s not yet known what impact the issue might have on the Vulcan’s certification, but ULA CEO Tory Bruno said it was being investigated.

“The process was nominal throughout,” he said in the company launch webcast. “However, we had an observation on SRB No. 1, so we will look at that after the mission is completed.” No further details were disclosed.

The Vulcan’s two Blue Origin-built BE-4 engines and two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) thundered to life at 7:25 a.m. EDT, breaking the morning silence with the crackling roar of 2 million pounds of thrust.

The 202-foot-tall, 1.5 million-pound rocket, adorned with a swirling red-and-white paint job, rose into the sky from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 41 and accelerated rapidly out of the dense lower atmosphere into its eastern trajectory.

The apparent booster anomaly was visible in long-range camera footage when a shower of sparks and what appeared to be debris fell from the right SRB 37 seconds after launch. The problem appeared to originate on or near the nozzle at the base of the booster. The exhaust plume changed shape dramatically, but the Vulcan was able to continue its ascent into space.

Aside from the anomaly, the strap-on boosters burned out and were jettisoned about 20 seconds later than planned. The methane-powered BE-4s, each producing 550,000 pounds of thrust, continued to propel the rocket out of the lower atmosphere for about three minutes before shutting down.

The non-reusable stage then fell away and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, and flight continued using power from the Centaur 5 upper stage’s two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C engines.

The upper stage fired its engines a second time after reaching orbit to demonstrate its ability to restart in space, a key requirement for military payloads that require complex “high energy” trajectories to reach their operational orbits.

Vulcan’s maiden launch on January 8 went smoothly and successfully launched a commercially built lunar lander. For the second flight, ULA originally planned to launch the maiden flight of a Sierra Space winged cargo ship – Dream Chaser – but the spacecraft could not be delivered on time.

Instead, ULA placed a dummy payload on the Vulcan, a so-called “mass simulator,” added some technology demonstration experiments to enable long-duration flights, and installed additional instruments to record as much data as possible during the 54-minute demonstration.

The “cert 2” mission “in the truest sense of the word has one main goal, namely to fly a second time and have another success,” said Bruno before the launch. Assuming a review of flight data confirms good performance, “then you are ready to fly national security payloads,” he added.

It is not yet known what impact the solid fuel booster problem might have on this data review and the rocket’s eventual certification.

But two such missions are planned for later this year, which Bruno described as “urgent.” Although he did not mention possible Space Force or NRO payloads, national security missions typically launch satellites that enable optical and radar imagery, electronic eavesdropping, encrypted communications relaying and other top-secret payloads.

Since the Vulcan wasn’t carrying an active payload on its second flight, ULA added “more instrumentation that we can only use to characterize a vehicle,” Bruno said.

“We’re adding all sorts of other instruments to better understand how the rocket works as we move forward. So that’s the mission: a second flight for certification and then some technology experiments of our own.”

ULA managers call the Vulcan “the future of our company.” It replaces the already retired Delta 4 rocket family and the venerable Atlas series, which dates back to the early days of the US space program.

ULA still has 15 Atlas 5 rockets in its inventory. Eight will be used to launch Amazon Kuiper Internet relay satellites, six will be reserved for launching Boeing’s Starliner crew ferry ship to the International Space Station, and one will be used to launch a Viasat communications satellite into orbit.

Once these missions have flown in the next few years, the Vulcan will be the company’s sole launch vehicle.

“The system that we’ve developed really sets us up for a very bright, successful future for many, many years to come,” Mark Peller, ULA vice president for Vulcan development, said before the rocket’s maiden flight. “It has already proven to be a highly competitive product in the market and has a backlog of over 70 missions prior to first flight.”

Unlike the Atlas 5, which powers the rocket’s first stage with Russian-built RD-180 engines, the all-American-powered Vulcan relies on two first-stage BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin, Amazon’s space company -Founder Jeff Bezos, were built.

At launch, the two BE-4s produce a combined thrust of 1.1 million pounds. The two strap-on solid propellant boosters produce an additional 919,200 pounds of thrust, for a total thrust of just over 2 million pounds. Depending on mission requirements, the Vulcan can be launched with up to six strap-ons.

The hydrogen-powered Centaur 5 upper stage engines produce 23,825 pounds of thrust, enabling the launch of heavy military payloads into so-called high-energy orbits that cannot easily be reached with rockets optimized for low Earth orbit.

Bruno wouldn’t reveal the cost of a Vulcan rocket other than to say it was less than $100 million, making it competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

“After this mission there will be a few missions for the Space Force,” Bruno said. “We expect these to be operational later this year, so it is urgent and we cannot wait any longer for the Dream Chaser.”