Successful Vulcan launch early Friday would unlock lucrative future for ULA

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United Launch Alliance is footing the bill for the second ever launch of its Vulcan Centaur rocket, so it can finally see the payouts for the backlog of $3.1 billion worth of national security missions, something ULA cannot do until the Space Force signs off on it.

For that, Vulcan needs two successful flights.

The mission, dubbed Certifcation-2, follows the successful debut launch last January of the replacement for ULA's family of Atlas and Delta rockets. It's set to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 during a three-hour window that opens at 6 a.m. Friday, and backup opportunities during the same window on Saturday.

"It has literally one primary objective, which is to go fly a second time and have another success," said ULA CEO Tory Bruno.

Space Launch Delta 45's weather squadron forecasts an 80% chance for good conditions, which drops to 75% in the event of a 24-hour delay.

After January's flight, Bruno had said Cert-2 could fly as early as April, but it was awaiting its original targeted payload, the Sierra Space Dream Chaser spacecraft that was trying to make its debut flight to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

"They just need a little bit more time, and they could not be ready to fly just quite yet," Bruno said.

Instead, Vulcan is flying with a mass simulator within the rocket's upper Centaur stage, that won't be deployed, but will allow ULA to collect the data it needs to hand over to the Space Force so the rocket can be given to OK to begin the backlog of National Security Space Launch (NSSL) contracts that need to be flown by 2027.

"We do need to certify to support our national security space customer, who has missions that are relatively urgent," Bruno said.

So without a paying customer, ULA is taking on the cost.

"Being as transparent as I can, it's high double digit. It's high tens of millions of dollars," he said.

In addition to the 25 of 26 remaining missions (one flew on an Atlas V this summer) won during what's known as the Phase 2 contract for NSSL missions, ULA is competing for the new Phase 3 contract alongside SpaceX and newcomer Blue Origin.

"Proposals are in, and they're being evaluated, and questions are being asked, being answered and so on," he said. "We feel we're in a very good position for that."

The government originally said the five years of missions to be assigned in the Phase 2 contracts would come out, so 60% would go to ULA and 40% to SpaceX. Because of delays to Vulcan, though, as the missions were doled out, the final year of the Phase 2 awards that came in late 2023 made the mission assignments closer to 50/50, giving only 11 to ULA and 10 to SpaceX.

For all five years of the contract, 48 missions worth more than $5.6 billion were ordered, and the final tally was ULA getting 26, or just over 54%, worth just over $3.1 billion, and SpaceX getting 22, which is just under 46%, worth just over $2.5 billion.

The contracts for the first of five years of Phase 3 awards are expected to be announced soon, with a portion of at least 30 missions over the five-year run to be doled out at the start of each fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

Even without the Phase 3 contracts in hand, ULA has a heavy manifest with its remaining NSSL missions as well as commercial customers, including Amazon and its Project Kuiper, which needs to launch thousands of its internet satellites to form a constellation that can compete with the likes of SpaceX's Starlink.

"The performance of that system promises to be pretty amazing," Bruno said of Project Kuiper. "I'm planning to get it at my house, because I live out in the country. My internet's not great."

Amazon has eight of ULA's remaining Atlas V rockets under contract to get the first of what's planned to be 3,236 broadband satellites sent up across up to 92 launches over five years. The first of those is slated for early 2025, Bruno said.

Amazon also ordered 38 more launches of Vulcan, and ULA has other commercial customers lined up for Vulcan as well.

Vulcan, though, was originally supposed to fly as early as 2019, but faced design hurdles as well as delays in delivery of the new BE-4 engines created by Blue Origin.

Vulcan takes two BE-4 engines, which along with up to six solid rocket boosters provided by Northrop Grumman, give Vulcan more power than either Atlas V or the now retired Delta IV Heavy, with 3.6 million pounds of thrust on liftoff.

After a long delay in getting the first two engines from Blue Origin for Cert-1, ULA is in a better place with their supplier. Except Blue Origin also needs to crank out BE-4 engines for its own rocket, New Glenn, which takes seven of them, and its debut flight is planned for as early as November.

"Before they began delivering to New Glenn, they completed all of their deliveries for 2024, to me, which was their CEO Dave Limp's promise to us, and he kept his promise," Bruno said. "They took a—I'll call it a holiday—from delivering to us while they populated the New Glenn."

Bruno said that Blue Origin, though, has switched back to producing for ULA.

"Within a few weeks, my deliveries will resume again, and they'll begin delivering engines to me now this year that I need for next year," he said. "They are going to stay ahead of my flight schedule."

That schedule calls for up to 20 launches, half of which (roughly) will be Vulcan, in 2025, Bruno said. An additional 24 Vulcan rockets are already in the works at various points of construction at ULA's factory in Decatur, Alabama.

That pace will continue to grow as ULA completes a second Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) so it can process two rockets at once at Space Launch Complex 41. That will allow ULA to perform up to 25 launches per year from the Space Coast while also bringing its California launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base up to speed for Vulcan launches.

So Blue Origin's plans are to step it up further after next year.

"There's a rate that does that, you could think of as keeping up with me. They're at that rate already, and they will keep up," he said. "Then they jump to a higher rate than that, because we want them to build ahead of need, and they're under contract to do that, and they plan to."

2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.