United Launch Alliance's (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket will conduct its first-ever national security launch next week, if all goes according to plan.
ULA announced on Tuesday (Aug. 5) that it's targeting Aug. 12 for USSF-106, a U.S. Space Force mission that will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
"This is the first national security space launch aboard the certified Vulcan rocket. The Vulcan rocket will deploy the USSF-106 mission directly to geosynchronous (GEO) orbit using the high-performance Centaur V upper stage," ULA said via X on Tuesday.
Vulcan Centaur — the replacement for ULA's venerable Atlas V rocket — has two flights under its belt to date, both of which have been successful.
The first one, which flew in January 2024, sent Astrobotic's robotic Peregrine moon lander to Earth orbit. (Peregrine suffered a crippling anomaly shortly after it deployed from the rocket's Centaur upper stage and ended up crashing back to Earth.)
Vulcan's second flight, in October 2024, was a test mission that flew with an inert mass simulator as a payload. The mass simulator took the place of Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane, the originally planned payload, which wasn't ready in time for the launch.
Vulcan powered through a problem on that second flight — the failure of of an engine nozzle on one of its two solid rocket boosters (SRBs). Its performance on those two missions impressed the Space Force enough to certify Vulcan Centaur for national security missions, a huge milestone for ULA that was announced in March.
The launch of a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket carrying the U.S. Space Force (USSF)-106 mission for the United States Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) is planned for Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025, from Space Launch Complex (SLC) 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,… pic.twitter.com/OkWwEAxSUzAugust 5, 2025
The decision doubled the number of currently certified U.S. national security launch providers; SpaceX had been the only company that could loft such payloads. (ULA's Atlas V launched many national security missions over the years, but no such payloads are on its docket ahead of its retirement in 2030 or so.)
"Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security," Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, the Space Force's program executive officer for assured access to space, said in a statement in late March. "Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency and flexibility needed by our nation's most critical space-based systems."
