Greater than 4 months after it was licensed to fly nationwide safety payloads for the US authorities, United Launch Alliance is on the cusp of launching simply such a mission with its Vulcan rocket.
The 202-foot-tall (61 m) rocket will launch a pair of satellites on a mission collectively known as United States House Pressure (USSF)-106. The 2-stage rocket will fly on a trajectory that may take it due east from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station.
“This mission is heading on to geoscynchronous orbit and might be one among our longest missions to this point,” mentioned Gary Wentz, the vp of Authorities and Business Packages for ULA throughout a prelaunch teleconference. “It was purposefully designed to help these missions, direct inject to GEO for the House Pressure. That is our a hundred and first mission for nationwide safety area and we’re proud to ship the vast majority of our nation’s crucial satellites to orbit.”
On Monday, ULA rolled the rocket a few third of a mile from the federal government Vertical Integration Facility (VIF-G) to the pad at House Launch Advanced 41. The journey took a bit of greater than an hour from first movement to settling down on the pad.
Spaceflight Now could have reside protection of this mission starting about 1.5 hours forward of liftoff, which is scheduled for 7:59 p.m. EDT (2359 UTC), the opening of a one-hour lengthy window. This livestream will even include protection of the countdown and launch for Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket, which has an instantaneous launch time of 8:37 p.m. EDT (0037 UTC).
The forty fifth Climate Squadron forecast an 80 p.c probability for favorable climate in the course of the hour-long launch window, with cumulus clouds and photo voltaic exercise being the 2 potential impacts.
The mission would be the third launch for therefore far for ULA in 2025. The primary two being Atlas 5 rockets that carried a complete of 54 satellites for Amazon’s Undertaking Kuiper broadband constellation.
Returning to nationwide safety area launches
The launch of the USSF-106 mission comes a number of years after it was initially supposed to fly, however critically marks ULA’s return to launching payloads as a part of the Nationwide Safety House Launch (NSSL) program for the House Pressure and the Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace (NRO).
Its final such launch, utilizing an Atlas 5 rocket, was the USSF-51 mission, which launched a bit of greater than a 12 months in the past on July 30, 2024. A decade previous to that, following Russia’s preliminary invasion of Ukraine, U.S. launch suppliers had been required to chop ties with Russian-made engines and shift to American-built {hardware}.
That put ULA on the trail to creating Vulcan and Northrop Grumman to maneuver away from its Antares 230+ rocket, additionally powered by engines with heritage from the previous Soviet Union.
After years of growth and two certification flights, ULA’s Vulcan rocket was cleared to fly NSSL payloads.
“We’re excited to be right here in the present day. Fairly historic level in our program’s historical past,” mentioned Col. James Horne We formally finish our reliance on Russian-made engines with this launch and we proceed to take care of our assured entry to area with two, impartial — no less than two impartial —rocket service corporations that we are able to leverage to get our capabilities in orbit.”
Getting Vulcan cleared to fly wasn’t a easy course of although. An anomaly with one of many nozzles on a Northrop Grumman-built strong rocket motor in the course of the second certification mission in October 2024 brought about a months-long delay in ending certification to start launching NSSL missions.
“We labored very intently with the ULA and Northrop Grumman groups, as we all the time do in these kinds of conditions. We’ve performed a few full-scale static fires, in depth sub-scale evaluation and modeling to get to launch [Tuesday] at an appropriate threat,” Horne mentioned. “So, that’s the method that we needed to work via as we acquired prepared for this mission and we dealt with that by our mission-specific certification course of.
“So we licensed the design of the automobile in March after which we labored via our mission-specific threat evaluation to get to launch [on Tuesday.]”
He mentioned moreover, the House Pressure additionally regarded intently at a number of different points of the rocket, like the 2 Blue Origin-built BE-4 engines that energy the Vulcan booster at liftoff, provided that it was a model new engine that flew for the primary time on a Vulcan rocket.
“I believe we acquired wonderful knowledge from Cert-2 that confirmed simply how able to an engine that’s with its potential to beat the difficulty we noticed with the SRB,” Horne mentioned. “We certified quite a lot of new constructions on this rocket: the tanks and the composite interstage adapters and warmth shields and issues like that.”
Horne mentioned whereas Vulcan is now licensed to fly what he referred to as “A and B missions,” the House Pressure continues to be within the technique of certifying the so-called “heavy model” of the Vulcan rocket, which sports activities six strong rocket motors.
ULA’s first launch with six solids might be a flight for Amazon’s Undertaking Kuiper constellation, which can launch 45 of these broadband satellites into low Earth orbit. Horne mentioned that flight alone received’t be enough to realize certification for the Vulcan on this configuration.
“The Kuiper launch will issue into certification, for remaining certification for the pad out of Vandenberg and for that variant of Vulcan to launch from that, however there’ll be additional evaluation and certification actions associated to the heavy launch and ULA has a superb schedule and tempo for that,” Horne mentioned. “That might be upfront of any heavy missions that we want.”
After it launches the USSF-106 mission, the following NSSL flight for ULA might be USSF-87. A launch date for the mission hasn’t been introduced, however final week ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno mentioned there might be a few Atlas 5 rocket launches earlier than the following nationwide safety mission.
Upgrading GPS
The USSF-106 mission is comprised of two satellites. A kind of stays a thriller with House Pressure officers unwilling to offer any particulars throughout Monday’s prelaunch information briefing.
The opposite, which is described as the first payload onboard the Vulcan rocket is the brainchild of the Air Pressure Analysis Laboratory and is known as the Navigation Expertise Satellite tv for pc-3 (NTS-3). The mission and launch collectively include a $250 million price ticket.
Dr. Joanna Hicks, a senior analysis aerospace engineer throughout the AFRL’s House Automobiles Directorate and principal investigator for the NTS-3 mentioned she’s excited to lastly launch a satellite tv for pc that she’s helped work on for years.
It follows within the footsteps of NTS-1 and NTS-2, which had been launched within the Seventies.
“That is the primary experimental navigation satellite tv for pc in 48 years. The final one was NTS-2 that launched in 1977,” Hicks mentioned. “On the lab, we predict that we’re overdue for an experiment on this space. GPS is such an integral a part of our lives in the present day… and with NTS-3, we’re going to be experimenting with numerous totally different applied sciences that take a look at how we are able to proceed to evolve and increase GPS to ensure that it stays the gold commonplace that our battle fighters want.”
As soon as deployed from Vulcan’s Centaur higher stage, the NTS-3 satellite tv for pc will take a pair weeks for checkouts and commissioning on orbit earlier than it could actually begin its work. Hicks mentioned she and her group would conduct greater than 100 PNT (place, navigation, timing) experiments that might assist increase the GPS system.
A few of these experiments embrace higher time-keeping strategies and testing an electronically steerable phased array antenna, which Hicks mentioned will assist “ship increased energy to get via interference to the placement the place it’s wanted.” One other is known as Chimera, which the AFRL mentioned is supposed to “collectively authenticate satellite tv for pc orbit knowledge and measurements of the vary between the satellite tv for pc and consumer, to offer an especially strong safety in opposition to GPS spoofing for civil customers.”
“As a reprogrammable structure, we don’t must have the whole lot deliberate out earlier than we go on orbit and earlier than we see what the threats are,” Hicks mentioned. “This isn’t simply on the satellite tv for pc aspect. We’re pairing that with reprogrammable consumer gear that’s capable of obtain new alerts that we’ve outlined even after we’ve launched. So we’re very enthusiastic about that.”
The prime contractor that manufactured the satellite tv for pc is L3Harris Applied sciences, which constructed upon Northrop Grumman’s ESPAStar satellite tv for pc bus. The corporate was reportedly awarded an $84 million contract for the spacecraft in 2018, which handed its crucial design overview in 2020.
At that time, launch was anticipated in 2022. Nevertheless, the satellite tv for pc wasn’t delivered to AFRL’s integration and check facility at Kirtland Air Pressure Base in New Mexico till January 2023, which shifted the deliberate launch date to later that 12 months.
“L3Harris, because the prime contractor for this system, has been chargeable for the design, growth, integration and check of the area automobile,” mentioned Andrew Builta, the vp of Technique and Enterprise Growth at L3Harris Applied sciences. “We additionally developed a portion of the bottom management phase, supported launch automobile integration, integration with the management and consumer phase and can help on orbit operations.”
The varied assessments will contain work each within the laboratory in addition to out within the discipline. Hicks mentioned a few of the learns from this, like calibrating a spot beam antenna could be utilized to the following era of GPS satellites, referred to as GPS 3-F, that are being developed and constructed by Lockheed Martin.
“One of many issues that NTS-3 is testing… is the multi-orbit constellation idea,” Hicks mentioned. “So, can we obtain alerts from NTS-3 at GEO in addition to GPS at MEO (medium Earth orbit) and reap the benefits of all of them. Possibly sooner or later, we’ll have the ability to put a few of these applied sciences in LEO, for instance.
“We don’t presently have that as a deliberate mission, however that’s one thing that might conceivably occur sooner or later.”
