A week after its most recent Atlas 5 rocket launch, United Launch Alliance rolled the vulcan booster for vertical integration facility at Florida’s Cape Canveral Space Force Station on Wednesday morning, which began to start stacking the first post-cyrtification vulcan rocket.
The operation referred to as a vehicle on stand (LVOS) launched by Ula is the first major milestone towards the launch of the third vulcan rocket to date. Ula President and CEO Tory Bruno announced the move on social media on Wednesday morning.
This is the second time that this particular vulcan booster was brought to the Space Launch Complex 41 in anticipation of the launch campaign. It was previously read in support of the USSF -106 mission in late October, planned of a vulcan rocket, first national security flight.
However, plans changed as a process of certifying the vulcan to blow these government payloads, it took longer than expected.
Busy day in cape … pic.twitter.com/clny7wnew8
– Tory Bruno (@ToryBruno) July 2, 2025
During the second of two certification flights for the vulcan, one of the Northrop Grumman-Made Mani 63xl solid rocket motors caused an issue with an insulator component on one of the early launch of October in the early launch of October. The rocket was able to compensate for discrepancy, but as a result, the American space force was able to find several and months of search work before being able to shut down its certification work.
In February, as soon as the certification process continued, ULA decided to pive on the pad for the vulcan and USSF-106, instead to allow another important customer, Amazon, to proceed to launch its first batch of project Kuper satellites for his low earth orbit.
“We are integrated with spacecraft teams and where we were monitoring [Amazon’s Project] Where the Kuper was and where the SF -106 was the partner and so we decided that we had some time, “the government and commercial programs Vice President Gary Wentz said, during an interview with a spaceflight in early February.
Ventz said, “We knew that we have some out-off-position work that we need to do on SF-106 boosters. We had to change some components and then later we will re-prepare them.” “And so, we chose to move forward and LVO to get that booster to get that work, so that we are ready to launch, whether it is 106 or Kuper.”
Near the end of March, the Aspected Access to Space (AATS) office of the US Space Force confirmed that the Vulcan obtained its certificates to launch the mission to be part of its National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. It has a backlog of 25 such missions as part of the NSSL Phase 2 contract, which has been awarded during five years and there are one and two missions assigned during the order year for NSSL Step 3 Lane 3.
Before returning to prepare for the Vulcan launch, Ula launched a pair of Atlas 5 rockets with cuper satellites on the ship on 28 April and 23 June.
During a media roundateable on the banks of the 40th space seminar in early April, Bruno said that he planned to launch about 11 to 13 times by the end of the year. He said that there would be about 50–50 partitions between Atlas and Vulcan rockets.
The next two vulcan launch is planned to be two NSSL Step 2 Mission: USSF-106 and USSF-87. Vulcan rockets for both are in Cape since last year, but the position of payload has not been discussed in public relations for national security.
Bruno said that after those two NSSL missions, the ULA would first launch the Kuper Vulcan Mission and then by the end of the year would bounce back and forth between Atlas and Vulcan flights.
National security vulcan mission
The USSF-106 mission will take several payloads, but to date, only one that has been publicly identified is the Department of Air Force’s navigation technology satellite-3 (NTS-3). The Prime Contractor is L3harris Technologies, which has integrated a tight position, navigation and timing (PNT) payload in an aspastar satellite bus from Northrop Grumman.
The mission is designed and coordinated by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). These Navy research laboratory’s NTS-1 and NTS-2 run on the footsteps of satellites, which were the pioneers of the Global Positioning System (GPS) Nakshatra starting deployment in the 1970s.
“The purpose of this pawn is not only to support GPS users through the important development of new techniques and techniques, but also show how a tight and responsible American satellite navigation is paramount to defeat the most challenging threats for the Architecture War Success, through the coming decades today,” NTS -3 Program Manager said.
During the 2022 space seminar, AfRL commander, Major General Heather Pringle told reporters that NTS-3 would demonstrate “over 100 experiments”, which “are designed to help solve war problems in the atmosphere of war.”
“We know that the path of war has changed and we are going to face difficulties with difficulties in our position, navigation and time signs for our war,” Printed said, “So, the way we can see new ways to address this satellite, it is really thrilling whether this is really thrilling for us whether it is this spot debutation or timing and navigation and navigation.”
The AFRL stated that the spacecraft is designed to operate in a near-Jiocyinkronus orbit for a year and “There will be a focal point for many experiments in many technical fields. This is notable because the current fleet of GPS satellites works in a medium earth orbit (Meo).
The satellite will carry several atomic watches for accurate timekeeping as well as chips-maces strong certification (chimera), “which jointly designed to certify the satellite orbit data and measurement between the satellite and the user, to provide a very strong security against GPS, according to the AFRL.
After the launch of the USSF-106, the Ula will launch a pair of satellites (GSSAP) satellites (GSSAP) satellites as part of the Ula USSF-87 mission.
