ULA plans to return Vulcan to flight on November 13 with 40 satellites — Ars Technica
US company United Launch Alliance (ULA) plans to launch a Vulcan rocket carrying 40 satellites for Amazon Leo’s broadband constellation from the US Space Force base at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 13. This is expected to be the rocket’s first flight since a solid rocket booster anomaly that occurred in February. The launch date still requires range approval, Ars Technica reports.
Modified booster nozzles
ULA said its engineers had identified several possible factors behind the February anomaly and mitigated their impact through changes to the nozzle design and manufacturing processes. The upcoming launch will use an improved nozzle variant, while additional testing and analysis will continue in parallel with the mission.
Solid rocket booster nozzle failures occurred on two of Vulcan’s first four flights. In both cases, the rocket completed its mission, but its flights were suspended after the February incident. ULA and booster manufacturer Northrop Grumman have not publicly named the final cause of the latest failure. Investigators linked the first similar case in 2024 to a manufacturing defect in an insulator that protects the nozzle’s metal structure from hot exhaust gases.
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First flight with six boosters
The November 13 launch will be Vulcan’s first with a full set of six solid rocket boosters. The rocket will also receive an extended payload fairing for 40 Amazon Leo satellites and a shortened Centaur upper stage optimized for missions to low Earth orbit for the first time. The total height of this version of Vulcan is 67.4 meters.
Amazon has booked 38 Vulcan flights to deploy the main part of its satellite network. The US Space Force plans to closely study data from the rocket’s commercial launches before allowing ULA to resume national security missions. At least two Amazon Leo missions are scheduled for Vulcan before the next such launch.
Due to ULA delays, the US Space Force transferred six missions from Vulcan to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to speed up their execution. At the same time, ULA received six future launches that had initially been assigned to SpaceX.
